


Let me spin and excite you

by lesbleusthroughandthrough



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas, Eventual Smut, Liverpool F.C., M/M, New York City
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-05-30 07:58:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15092492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbleusthroughandthrough/pseuds/lesbleusthroughandthrough
Summary: It was only when the elevator dinged closed – the two of them, remarkably, the sole occupants – that it hit him.The driver? The last minute fine dining? The ridiculously well-cut clothes? The shrug, when Jordan had asked if expensive restaurants were something that was normal? Even, the speed at which their coffee order had been served up in the place Adam had picked?“Whoareyou?” he asked, out loud.-AU where Adam is really wealthy and Jordan really isn't and they both try and figure out dating.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blindbatalex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindbatalex/gifts).



> Title is from [May I Have This Dance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhtoDhlffsE) by Francis and the Lights, because I've been listening to it on a loop while writing this. 
> 
> This fic is for Alex, who asked me to write this but who has also been a fab cheerleader in general despite the whole Manchester United thing. Also a big shout out to [SixPonderous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SixPonderous) for helping me muddle my way through this, and who gave Hendo glasses. 
> 
> For some reason I've decided to set this fic at Christmas time (it's June) and in New York (I have been there one time)! I can't explain it, these things just happen. But I really really hope you enjoy reading this, the bane of my existence for the last few months!

There was a noticeable difference between the thirtieth of November and the first of December. A clock-struck-midnight, magical difference – exactly like a Christmas movie, and Jordan might never have noticed it, if he had not given up on the heating in his apartment an hour earlier than normal and escaped to the coffee shop around the corner for breakfast.

Obviously, Christmas hadn’t come from _nowhere_. The decorations had gone up overnight, similarly, on the first of November, bunches of holly and Santa hats replacing the spiders and pumpkins of Halloween. But back then it had felt a little forced, a little too early. Now, Jordan thought, watching the shop fill up and forgetting about his half-eaten muffin; it felt suddenly _tangible_ – all cinnamon-y, and nutmeg-y, and everything seemed to have become a good deal _cosier._ The shop was full to the brim, and everyone’s coats were pulled up over their ears. As far as Jordan was aware, the temperature hadn’t dropped any great degree outside.

Jordan had been to a lot of coffee shops in Manhattan over the years – they made great middle ground for business meetings on a budget – but Clyney’s was by far and away his favourite. The coffee was truly excellent, and it wasn’t just because Clyney had sort of become his mate – all that bonding recently over his lease assignment – and the fact he didn’t mind giving Jordan free top ups, despite the fact Jordan, working for Legal Aid, never technically got these things for free. No, Jordan really liked this place that seemed to have carved its way into this Harlem shop front, all exposed timber and three very squishy seats, the chalk boards drawn up every morning and the festive poinsettias potted wherever there seemed to be a spare ledge. For a guy that was arm-to-arm tattoos and may never have worn a jumper in his life, Clyney had a good eye for all things cosy.

But then again, maybe it wasn’t at all that romantic. Maybe the shop was suddenly fuller because it was rush hour, it was Monday, and the building that this coffee shop was so carefully nestled into was being sold – and hence it was filled to the brim with suits.

His mood now deflating as fast as it had come on, Jordan flicked his watch up to look at it, out of dull habit, and not because he was late for work. If he was really late he knew some secret sense would have made him neck his second latte by now. He lifted his glasses off and rubbed the skin a little where they sat heavy on the bridge of his nose.

“Are you going to eat that?” a voice said beside him. 

Jordan jumped back into reality a little more forcefully and stuck his glasses back on to get a good look. The voice’s owner, grinning, pointed at Jordan’s muffin: half unpeeled from the cupcake wrapper, fully forgotten about. Jordan was far too busy noticing that the voice owner had a mop of hair that fuzzed and curled at the ends, down over his forehead – like had been forced flat under a hat, rather like the woolly one on his lap. So, he did not note, despite his usually very sharp brain, how refined the edges of his clothing were – as though they were a little bit luxe. He would come to wish he’d noticed that.

Instead, he thought: _oh._

His new friend wrinkled his nose a little at the lack of response – an apology, possibly deciding that Jordan hadn’t understood him, due to language or just dimness and Jordan wouldn’t blame him for either – and turned towards the nearest chalkboard menu. Jordan instantly forgave the fact that this total stranger had just tried to claim his breakfast.

It was around then that Jordan realised the reason for his brain fart: due to some combination of a floof of slightly mussed hair and a short chin, the guy next to him seemed to have almost comically large eyes, and they were extremely clear, and wonderfully brown, and that Jordan may already be suckered at this earliest of stages.

“Blueberry,” his voice rose, raspy and thin, from where it had been hiding right down at the bottom of his throat. It was enough, though, to get the guy to look back at him again. “Blueberry is the best, here.”

The guy blinked, and his possession of very long, very quivery lashes meant Jordan’s heart thumped so hard that he was almost afraid everyone in the shop might have heard it. Then, “is that it? Can I try some?”

Reflexes kicked in, then, and as the guy reached Jordan yanked the muffin closer to himself by the wrapper in a defiant display of possession. He felt his face scowling and urged it to stop with alarm, but then the most amazing thing happened. The guy grinned at him – sudden, and large, and genuine and with definite mischief – and said: “alright, I can take a hint.” He shrugged his coat down his shoulders as he stood and meandered his way up to the counter.

Stunned, Jordan’s eye caught the label of the coat in a puddle on the seat next to him. _Burberry,_ it read, and that word searched through the complete blackout in his head for something to connect with. _Blueberry,_ he thought, dully.

He lifted his head again. The guy was leaning against the counter and chatting _animatedly_ to Clyney – a first, for all the times Jordan had ever been in this place before sunrise. Like, Jordan considered Clyney his friend, but not from any amount of in-depth exchanges that didn’t involve leases or lattes.

_Get a grip!_

But people just _didn’t_ sit beside him in coffeeshops. _Nobody_ ever _talked_ to total strangers in coffeeshops in New York City. _Ever._ Definitely not in a friendly manner. And especially not ones that elicited this horrible, hopeless _twinge_ of attraction in him. It was unpleasant and painful, and Jordan normally reserved it for the third date and onwards, which was probably one reason for the alarm bells going off quite loudly in his brain.

A change of stance up at the counter broke his state just a little: the guy had turned around to look at him and Clyney had joined him with a look of barely contained glee. Jordan scowled and tugged his muffin closer to him again, and on cue they both burst out _laughing_ , and Clyney pushed a muffin towards the guy on a plate.

_Clyney laughs?_ Jordan wondered it with weird envy.

Balancing his plate on one hand, the guy carefully weaved his way back the several meters to slide back onto the bench, and, in light of those good-natured creases around his eyes - and the fact that they were there, and it wasn’t even eight o’clock on a Monday - Jordan had to concede that even the change of the most stringent of moods wasn’t completely outside the realms of possibility under this kind of assault.

He wondered, watching this odd, new acquaintance of his peel down the side of his muffin wrapper and slice a generous piece off with his fork, what exactly he had done to deserve this. He realised too late that he had been watching a stranger lever a far too large piece of confectionery into his mouth, and far too intently, so dropped his eyes back to the newspaper under his cold breakfast.

A dissatisfied sound, though, was enough to make him start.

“ _No_?” he said, mostly at the bounce of very soft hair next to him as the guy shook his head, the front of it looking lighter than a feather. “What do you mean, _no_?” His voice cracked a little at the end, and it wasn’t because of the muffin.

_Get a grip!_ It was very unlike Jordan to have a meltdown in reaction to pure aesthetics. Maybe he just needed to pay more attention to Clyney’s clientele.

“I mean,” the guy said conspiratorially, “you’ve got to be joking if you think this is the best blueberry muffin I’ve had north of the park.” And he grinned, crumbs and all.

Jordan felt the air current shift between their seat and the counter top, and Clyney was wearing a matching, Cheshire Cat grin.

“Alright,” Jordan said, turning around in his seat now. “What’s the game?”

The guy’s cheeks reached lovely, round peaks. His eyes shone, delighted.

“Get more than four words in a row,” he lifted the muffin out of its wrapper now, “from you, and the muffin is free.” He raised it in a toast towards the counter. Clyney dismissed him with a wave of his hand, shrugged apologetically at Jordan, and was still grinning when he turned to greet his next customer.

_I was defending his honour!_

The guy next to him broke off another piece of his muffin.

“If you don’t like it,” Jordan began, and it was now his turn to reach.

He didn’t get to finish. He’d already leaned far too far into the guy’s space, grabbing at the muffin which had been angled further away, and realised his mistake far too late.

_This_ was the game. Jordan was caught now in an unbearably touchy-feely, compromising position, oh so very close to this guy’s face, _interacting_. He could no longer ignore the fact of it. The grin of pure glee that greeted him was the proof. And it matched some very brown eyes, and very soft lashes, and Jordan felt uncomfortably warm across the tops of his cheeks. It wasn’t because he was furious that he’d fallen for it.

_He must get a lot of free breakfasts this way_ , he thought dully, forgetting that he was really overstaying his welcome in someone else’s space. Not that that someone else seemed to mind.

Slowly, he pulled himself back upright and sat square in his seat with a thud. This was too complicated for the morning time. _Interaction_ was too complicated for the morning. This was why, he told himself, he hadn’t come up with a good retort.

A muffin appeared in his peripheral vision.

“You earned it,” the guy teased.

“You don’t _deserve_ it,” Jordan snorted.

“My name’s Adam, by the way.”

_Brass_ , Jordan thought. But it was all that there had been here in the span of the last five minutes: eating Jordan’s food, stealing Jordan’s friends, forcing Jordan to interact with him to win a bet and talking to Jordan even though Jordan had a newspaper on the table – unwritten code for avoiding both screens _and_ humans.

“Apology not accepted.” Jordan was cranky, he knew, mostly because this guy was _stunning_ him.

The guy – Adam – shifted in his seat and drew his coat into his lap.

“Alright,” he said, “then what about your coffee?”

Jordan started. “What about my coffee?”

“Are you sure you still want it? It looks like it’s cold.” Delivered with a grin.

Jordan was trying to be angry, really, and tried, really tried, to think about how under normal circumstances if someone spoke to him at all during his morning coffee, which was theoretical at best as it was something he had never encountered in the city anyway, let alone _rudely;_ that he could be snappy, or silent.

But this guy continued, despite the odds, to be very attractive. And so, Jordan grinned back.

“I’m Jordan.” A truce.

* * *

 

“And so,” Andy was saying, pressing his palms to the side of his own face for emphasis. “As it turned out, I’d been missing a trick all along. You know what the _real_ secret is? Do you know,” he lowered his voice to a colluding whisper. “An absolute _game changer_. For the perfect,” it now took on that distinct Scottish lilt, as it tended to do when he got exasperated, “ _spaghetti Bolognese_?”

Andy had been working in their office for six months and at this stage Jordan was used to his wild takes on everyday events. Far more amusing was just quite _how_ Scottish he could become when things became serious, an antidote to every late-night drafting session.

“What?” Chambo said, teasing. He had his head on his hands, his keyboard long forgotten. If anyone could get them all hooked on a very ordinary date-night-in story it was Andy every time.

“ _Tomato purée_.” Andy shook his hands for emphasis. “You know, that yucky brown stuff that comes in a tub the size of your thumb?”

“It’s red, and I don’t think you’re meant to eat it straight, Andy.” Chambo was smiling from ear to ear. He’d clung to this nickname because his full one of _Oxlade-Chamberlain_ , he claimed, was far too fancy and double-barrelled for a legal clinic. Also he said it was satisfyingly close to Rambo, and this was something he wanted to emulate. No one had the heart to tell him that with freckles and curly hair, there was a reason Chambo was a hit with the older women among their clientele.

“I mean, I never bought it because, why waste the dollar. There are already three types of tomato… _things_ in there.” Andy was waving his hands in the air for emphasis. At their collection of desks, pushed together at weird angles so they could collectively tackle their case, everyone was hooked. Everyone except Lo, of course, with the sound muffed out by his enormous earphones. He just looked spectacularly bored instead. “But it’s pure... I don’t know how I could have ever _lived_. Pure. Solid. Pasta sauce.”

Jordan hid his grin behind his hand, mostly because of Trent’s wide, open face nodding at this valuable piece of information, everyone else – party to the discussion whether they wanted to be or not – knowing full well that this was the first and last home cooked meal that Andy’s girlfriend would ever get. Jordan’s own experience had involved his first night with flatmates, and volunteering to make fajitas. Half a week’s rent worth of groceries later and take out would become a way of life.

Andy, now at the end of his story, pulled himself to his feet in a long arc of a stretch. “Coffee, anyone?”

“Alright,” Chambo said, following the motion.

Jordan turned his attention back to his laptop, settling his elbows to the desk top so he could massage a slight ripple of tension from his brow, and under where his glasses balanced on his ears. He just could not seem to part the brain fog… and yet every time it looked like it _would_ part, his head filled with the coffee shop that morning and the array of visceral feelings he just could not seem to grab.

Now he was trying to tell himself, repeatedly without success, that Adam really was not all that attractive. He had been taken by surprise because someone had paid any attention to him at all, and the slam of his heart every time Adam came into his head – far too often – was because of this, and not because Jordan was a sucker for a big smile and brown eyes.

“Hendo?”

Jordan looked up to his nickname. Trent’s voice had quavered slightly as he’d asked, stretching a bundle of papers across Chambo’s empty desk between them: “you alright?”

His internal bickering must have been obvious.

“Fine,” he replied, with more of a grimace than a smile. “Thanks,” he said, accepting the stack of briefings. _Great._ More _paper_. “I have a bit of a headache, that’s all.”

Trent, all wide-eyed, didn’t take the polite hint. “But you _never_ get headaches.”

Jordan had to remind himself that Trent was not actually new to the team. Trent had started working with them a year ago. He only _looked_ about twelve, and probably played into it when he pulled on that slightly overwhelmed, slightly puzzled expression that meant everyone in the office went a little easier on him.

“It’s nothing,” Jordan said.

“What’s nothing?” A fresh mug of coffee in hand, and Chambo slid back into the empty desk between them, laughter from whatever joke Andy had told over at the kettle still dying around his eyes.

“Hendo has a headache,” Trent announced, too innocently.

Now Chambo looked at him, slightly worried. “But you _never_ get headaches?”

“It’s really nothing,” Jordan stressed, as Adam’s face creased into laughter, in a loop, constantly, in his head.

“Did you have your second coffee this morning?”

“I…” Jordan had not finished his second coffee that morning. “No.”

Chambo blinked. “ _Really_? I mean I was kidding. You _always_ have two coffees in the morning.”

This was turning into a worrying account of Jordan’s worst habits.

“I got distracted,” he admitted, “because someone,” _Adam! Adam! Adam!_ “someone tried to hit on me when I was drinking it.”

“Rude,” Trent declared.

“What?” Andy’s jaw even dropped open a little. “Who even _does_ that?”

Across from them, Loris’ eyebrow cocked with interest. Jordan knew Loris’ earphones weren’t up nearly as high as he obviously liked to pretend.

“Agreed. Who would even hit on you before your second coffee?” Chambo joked.

“Yeah,” Andy nodded, giddy, “sometimes you really crush someone just by looking at them. Like Magneto from X-Men.” Through the thick dose of Scottish, it took them all several seconds to connect the reference.

“Thanks guys,” Jordan said dryly. “Thanks a bunch.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Chambo admitted with a shrug. “I would have enjoyed being there when you went through them for a short cut.” He yawned suddenly, and stretched, his eyes clearly wandering back to the computer screen in front of him.  Jordan felt he would have got a lot more probing if they were paid overtime, and if Andy’s enthralling Bolognese story hadn’t been about ten minutes longer than it needed to be.

* * *

 

The previous day’s brief conversation with his colleagues was praying a little heavily on Jordan’s mind the next morning as he dragged himself up the subway steps, several stops down from his own.

_This had better be one hell of a muffin_.

Jordan knew, with a sinking, guilty feeling that he wasn’t here for the muffin. The fact he’d ditched his glasses this morning for his much-maligned contact lenses was evidence enough.

_What am I doing?_ He thought, as he forced his feet forward. _This guy could have sent me anywhere._

Around the corner. Four doors up the street. A coffee shop less decidedly hipstery than Clyney’s, but still with all the hallmarks of a place trying very, very hard: a deliberately colourful awning, an obstacle course of chairs and tables out front (as though anyone would sit outside today, when the clouds hung halfway down the skyline) and peeling gold lettering like an old-fashioned patisserie.

Vying for people’s morning brew in Manhattan was obviously such a dog-eat-dog world that Jordan didn’t even want to contemplate it.

That Adam’s directions lead exactly to the kind of place he had described did nothing to loosen the knot in Jordan’s stomach.

_I bet he’s not here,_ he thought, with only a little panic; _yesterday I was mean and rude. Today I will also, probably, be mean and rude. The guys in the office said it like a fact, and they’re my_ friends.

He pushed the door inwards, and there, sitting at the table and chairs just inside the window, was Adam.

Adam still had that soft, lighter crest of hair combed back in a quiff from his face – no hat today - and he must have been waiting for the door to open because he turned, and when he saw Jordan he relaxed into his grin. Jordan’s stomach dropped, it was a weirdly pleasant sensation.

“Hi.” Jordan didn’t even absorb the looks of disgust he received as he skipped the line waiting to be seated.

“Morning.” Adam was wearing a sweater that fitted him even better when his shoulders relaxed back, widening his chest and stretching his neck. His coat was folded perfectly flat over the back of his chair. “I didn’t think you’d come,” he admitted, after a moment’s hesitation. Maybe he’d noticed Jordan’s lack of glasses. Maybe he was wondering why he’d ditched them. Maybe Jordan’s face not hidden behind thick, oversized plastic frames was somehow now an unappealing prospect.

Jordan started to sweat a little. He made to sit down, and his wooden chair squealed awkwardly against the shiny tiled floor.

“You’re early,” he pointed out, trying not to over-examine the moment. “Why would you think that?” he added, a little sarcastically. Sarcasm was hard before his first coffee.

Adam nodded at the deli counter across the room. “Alright. Maybe you can take another swipe at _my_ muffin and we can finally call it quits.”

“I had to come and see what all the fuss was about.” _Look somewhere else!_ He ordered his eyes anywhere but Adam’s face, and he achieved it by unbuttoning his coat and letting his eyes come to rest on the menu on the table without really taking it in. It was short lived: Adam’s persistent fiddling with his jumper sleeve, pulling it down and twisting it around his thumb, brought Jordan’s eyes back to him after only a pathetically short interlude.

A waiter materialised beside them, a little falsely chipper for the hour. Jordan wasn’t used to being waited on for his morning coffee and he didn’t know how he felt about it. For a start, being approached before he made up his mind was a bit too much conflict for the hour, and second, the presence of a waiter taking their order made this feel a lot more like a date on-purpose than a casual coffee.

“You won’t be disappointed,” Adam sing-songed, jutting his chin out to reach something near Jordan’s height across the table. He turned to the waiter, “two blueberry muffins. And a coffee, dark. And…?” He trailed off, waiting for Jordan to answer.

Jordan didn’t answer for far, far too long.

“A latte,” he croaked, eventually. The waiter gave him a funny look.

Adam didn’t seem to notice. “I didn’t have you pinned as a latte guy,” he said, with genuine interest.

“ _Pinned_?” Jordan thought, as though people were assigned to their coffees like a star sign. Then again, he thought, looking at Adam with hair he appeared to have actually brushed and slacks which were exactly the right length; certain people did give off certain wannabe auras. He looked at the specials board propped up on the table, which had the word _custardo,_ followed by the explanation that it was an espresso with a scoop of custard, and then the price; and he felt his blood curdle slightly at the combination of all three.

“Yeah,” Adam grinned. “Don’t tell me you’ve never ordered a cappuccino. I mean you’re just so -” He paused mid-breath, as though he had something to add. His pause got quite long. And then, just faintly. Jordan may not have even noticed if his eyes had not been trained so absolutely on Adam’s face. Just the slightest dusting of pink, right at the edges of his cheeks.

Something that had been sitting heavy on Jordan’s chest lifted. He hadn’t even realised he had needed this: tacit recognition that they both shared motives for meeting this morning. It had almost felt like it had been too much to hope for. Then, almost as if Adam had seen the expression on Jordan’s face and couldn’t help it, his eyes swept down and travelled the whole way back up Jordan again.

“I drink cocoa sometimes too,” Jordan said. He meant it to sound cool, but he wasn’t even entirely certain of the innuendo he was trying to match. Something about being a bit sweet under the foam, and it was just luck that he managed to stop that coming out because it was so, so dumb.

“Yo.” The waiter interrupted by waving his notebook a little. He looked very unimpressed, his grin now visibly forced, possibly because of the lengthening line of people craning their necks to get in the shop behind them, possibly because of the terrible coffee analogies.

But it was hard to concentrate on that, and not the way Adam’s head turned to address the waiter, with his chin up; and the curl of his hair down into the parting at the back of his quiff.

_What is going on!_ Jordan wondered desperately. _What is happening to me!_

“Thanks,” he croaked. “For the coffee.” Adam had handed his shiny, heavy-looking black credit card to the waiter before he’d disappeared, waving away the beginnings of Jordan’s protest.

_Is this a date?_ He thought, with a weird clench of panic in his stomach. It got worse when Adam leaned back into his seat, stretched one arm back over it and grinned the longest smile Jordan had ever seen. He looked very comfortable, like he came here often and this shiny, stately coffee house was his natural habitat. It wasn’t quite Jordan’s, but he could deal with it.

“I promised you the best muffin in the city,” Adam said with a slight shrug. “That is, if you still want it.”

“Do you always,” Jordan said testily, “initiate conversations with declarations of ownership over other people’s property.”

Adam laughed out loud, throwing his head back. _Flirting_ , Jordan realised, with both delight and horror. “They’re big words for seven a.m.”

“But do you?”

Adam shrugged. “Sharing is caring.” And he started laughing again. “You’re never going to forgive me for that, are you?”

Their coffees arrived, forcing their conversation into a pause. Jordan was almost suspicious of the speed of their order. He hadn’t even felt the slight tremors in his hands, but really noticed them now as his coffee slurped around in his cup when he lifted it and threatened to spill over the edge into the saucer.

“No,” he said, between slurps. “It was only yesterday.” The coffee was almost sickly luxe, with that lingering, slightly fruity aftertaste that usually added about four dollars to the price tag. Jordan was never quite sure that he liked it, because normally his coffee tasted burnt and not slightly fermented, and he had always been fine with it that way.

Adam’s eyes took on a resolute gleam. They were also very brown, and Jordan was also not mad at him at all, just furious at himself that he was being so easily led along in this. “What about forgiving me tomorrow?”

“There are better muffins? Where, Brooklyn?”

Adam looked stumped for a few seconds, and then delighted. “If that’s what it takes,” he said.

Jordan couldn’t decide if _flirt_ was just one of Adam’s character traits. He decided to change the subject.

“How did you find this place?” he asked, looking around to give himself a breather from being completely overwhelmed.

“I work in this part of town sometimes,” Adam explained easily. “But I can’t take the credit, one of the guys in the office pointed it out.” Then he moved, drawing Jordan right back in again: picking up his breakfast on the table in front of him. “They’re really,” he started peeling down the wrapper, “damn good.”

Jordan decided that he might as well follow suit, panicking a little: what exactly _were_ the characteristics that defined one blueberry muffin from another? But then he took a bite.

“It’s,” he began, and thrust his hands up over his mouth to keep the crumbs in. Because I was so damn good, and it seemed a shame to end the experience by speaking, he finished: “ _mmmMMhhh_!”

“Nice, right?” Adam said brightly. “I think it’s because they use sunflower oil instead of butter. Makes the batter nice and light, you know?”

Jordan had no idea, but he nodded anyway. “Light,” he mumbled, “fluffy.” He broke off another large piece. “ _Christ._ ” It was moist without being soggy, light without losing flavour. It was, truly, an _excellent_ muffin.

“What do you do,” he said, trying to start another conversation by waving his hand towards the window, “around here.”

He had meant it as a very innocent question, but Adam took some time to consider his answer.

“I project manage,” he paused, “property sales.”

“Oh,” Jordan said, failing to mask that he was impressed. As job titles went it was _very_ fancy, and explained a little how Adam could eat here often without the price of the coffee burning a hole in his pocket. “That’s cool. How did you get into that?”

“Family business,” Adam replied, flatly. Then he shifted in his seat, looking a little uncomfortable.

Jordan was surprised by the sudden drop in temperature. Normally, people who wore nice clothes and spent over five dollars on a single cup of coffee _loved_ to be asked what they did for a living.  

“Sorry,” Adam said, leaning forward suddenly in his seat. “I just, work all day, you know.”

That wasn’t it, somehow. _He doesn’t like his job_ , Jordan decided, as an explanation. It crossed Jordan’s mind just as a look fluttered across Adam’s eyes, as though he had only just realised how that could be interpreted.

“I could be doing other things,” he followed up, by way of explanation.

This was all still very vague, but then again Jordan barely knew the guy.

“I work for a legal clinic,” Jordan said. He’d meant it to be almost consolatory, but it came out more like: _well, I love_ my _job._ “I get it.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “A lawyer?” he asked, surprised.

Jordan got this kind of thing a lot. All those TV shows about New York attorneys seemed to suggest only a certain type of person followed that career path, and Jordan already knew from countless previous conversations that he didn’t _look_ like _that_ kind of person. Although Adam seemed less surprised by this revelation than the fact that Jordan drank lattes as a first preference.

“No,” he admitted. Couldn’t afford law school. Not poor enough to qualify for a scholarship program. Trying to make the best of a bad situation. He shrugged, “through the clinic I got on a course from the NYSDRA. Dispute resolution,” he explained. He realised he was telling a lot to a stranger who had been very cagey about his own answer to the question. He kept going anyway. “I can,” he motioned, “help.”

Adam was giving him a strange look. “That’s very…”

“We have almost no funding,” Jordan spilled the words out to defend his career choice, “but it’s really worth it. We make a difference.”

“I was going to say, that’s very noble of you.”

Jordan paused like he couldn’t believe his ears. And Adam smiled at him: differently, not like he was containing laughter, not smug, nor pleased. Just warm. So damn warm that Jordan’s throat grew all tight like he’d downed a mouthful of too-hot coffee.

“Really?” he croaked.

“Yeah,” Adam was nodding, “you get to make a _real_ difference. Not just crowdfunding, or – “

“- we could do with more crowdfunding,” Jordan admitted. “We have to compete for donations with the polar bears, they’re always going to win.”

They laughed, Adam’s coffee spilling a little over the edge of his cup as he shook.

“Why did you talk to me,” Jordan asked, wiping stray crumbs from his cheeks, “yesterday.”

“ _Why_?”

“Yeah.”

Adam gave his head a small shake to flick a long strand of hair back from his eyes. He leaned on his hand, propped up on the edge of the couch by his elbow. Slowly, he gave Jordan a dusting up and down with his eyes.

“Because I like you.”

Jordan was not expecting this to be the answer. He definitely was not expecting it to be served with such frank honestly.

“Huh,” he said.

“Well, why else?”

“I dunno. I thought you just wanted my breakfast,” Jordan shrugged, “or maybe it was some sort of – weird – social experiment – “

Adam had been drinking coffee when somewhere it went wrong, and he started to laugh, or to cough. Jordan got half to his feet, a little alarmed, but Adam waved him back.

“ _Social experiment_?” Jordan could just about make it out through the spluttering. “ _First thing_ on a _Monday_?”

“I don’t – “Jordan began, desperately. Adam was rubbing his throat now, calming it bit by bit. He was still pink around the cheeks, and Jordan was transfixed.

“No,” Adam croaked now, grinning from ear to ear, “not a social experiment.” He hiccupped a little.

_Because he_ likes _me._

_Well, that’s dumb. Our conversations have totalled five minutes._

But, Jordan thought. Despite the obvious smack of attraction he was weathering, talking to Adam was disarmingly easy. Too easy. Adam was trying really, _very_ hard to be nice.

“I don’t know,” Jordan said, “why you think I’d believe you.”

 “Well that depends,” Adam asked. He paused again, and went a very deep shade of pink.

“What?” Jordan asked, utterly charmed.

“I’m free Friday evening,” Adam said, dropping his eyes, “if you want to hang out.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

“How susceptible do you think Mo would be,” Andy was scratching the end of his ballpoint pen rather noisily off the end of his scruffy chin, “to business suggestions?”

Jordan had been shuffling files in order, stooped over his desk, when he paused. Across from him, Chambo – in the middle of the same task – drew his eyebrows into a questioning knot when he looked at him. Probably because they were both wondering why Andy was bringing up the owner of the pizza restaurant downstairs.

To their silence, Andy said: “you can answer yes or no, if putting it on a scale is too hard for ye.”

“Well, I think he would just nod, and grin, and laugh, and you’d never know if he’d actually taken it on board,” Chambo offered, carefully. “Besides, I don’t think much could be done to actually _improve_ his service.”

“No,” Andy agreed, wistfully still scratching under his chin with his pen.

“What are we talking about?” Trent piped up behind the two enormous storage boxes he was carrying, piled one on top of the other. They dropped heavily onto Jordan’s desk.

“You can ask me for _help_ ,” Jordan said to him, horrified that Trent might slip a disc, and that he might somehow be responsible for it. Also, horrified that if Trent slipped a disk the clinic might fall apart without him.

“Andy’s thinking about Mo,” Chambo said, with deliberate innuendo.

“It’s Friday,” Trent said, “we’re _all_ thinking about Mo.”

“His mushroom-pepperoni is the absolute fulcrum of my week,” Andy sniffed, “if that means I’m hot for the guy, then I’ll say it: I’m hot for the guy.”

Chambo made a face. “I’m already sorry I started this.”

“He’s too good for you,” Trent said to Andy, snickering. They all grinned at him: like they always did, proudly, whenever the office baby engaged in any kind of banter.

“What was your business proposal?” Jordan asked. In his pocket, his phone hummed against his thigh. “Not that it matters.”

“A festive menu,” Andy said, brightly. “All this holly and mistletoe has got me thinking.”

Chambo snorted. “What, like – gingerbread pizza? He could call it _Merry Crustmas_ – “, Andy opened his mouth to reply in earnest but Chambo cut him off with a “ – _no,_ Andy, I was _joking_.”

“Can’t a guy just crave the mulled wine of home without having his dreams torn apart?”

“Me and Hendo will _buy_ you some – Hendo?”

Jordan was caught looking for too long at his phone. _Meet you at 7!_

In the last couple of days Adam had not at all slipped from his mind. He had spent too much of his free time, and his not-so-free time, dissecting, reliving, analysing everything that Adam had said, every way he had looked at him. They had gone from _nothing_ to _date_ in just a few minutes and yet the tingling in the base of his gut was as much excitement as nerves.

“Uh,” he said, as everyone watched him. “I can’t tonight.”

Andy’s mouth hung open in shock. He had a very slack jaw for someone who spent his time dealing with the front-line issues of the day. “You have something _better_ to do?”

Yes. Yes, looking at Adam for several short minutes phenomenally outweighed the same pizza he ate every Friday.

But he didn’t want to tell them about Adam, not yet. Not until he knew where it was going. It was still too new, and anyway, the way his stomach had somersaulted into knots when he thought about how _good_ Adam looked was something he wanted to treasure by himself for now.

He shrugged, and lifted the lid off one of the storage boxes Trent had brought in. “No,” he hoped he said nonchalantly, “I’ve just got a thing.”

“A _thing_ ,” Andy murmured, incredulous.

“Washing your hair, Hendo?” Trent asked.

The room had stilled. All three of them stared at him, baffled. Jordan resented the he had, up until now, been the kind of person who never had anything better to do.

“It’s really boring,” he tried, scrambling for ideas as to why he couldn’t sit in a pizza shop until midnight on a Friday. “Just an errand. I promise. It’s _me_.”

“An _errand_ ,” Andy waggled his eyebrows. “As if this wasn’t already _suspicious_.”

“Hendo,” Chambo said with derision, “I am appalled. It’s as though you actually have a life.”

Jordan’s phone buzzed in his hand. They all stared at it.

“We aren’t done here,” Andy said, waggling his pen at Jordan now when he scowled at them all, like an extension of his warning finger.

* * *

 

Jordan checked his watch again.

He was early. He _knew_ he was early. The subway entrance where he said he’d meet Adam was only a block away but after he’d managed to excuse himself from their office, run home, dump his weekend’s worth of work and throw a change of clothes on, _rushing_ was all he could think about.

He wasn’t entirely sure what had come over him. He’d left the other guys in a mountain of work on a Friday evening and this was not at all like him. Jordan had garnered a reputation of leaving late and he normally hated leaving work half-finished, although not today, apparently. He even had a key for locking up, the only other person apart from the building’s janitor. He was always surprised that whoever owned their building was willing to shell out for a janitor and yet not a couple of tins of paint or to fix the many leaks in the patchy and faded three storeys.

He shut his apartment door, turned keys in the different locks, shoved his gloved hands into his pockets, and set off down the stairs.

Despite telling himself that his chilly walk to the subway station was a time to calm down and evaluate, Jordan couldn’t quite manage either. And he felt that this was all vindicated, suddenly, when the steps down to the station came into view and Adam was standing there. _He looks_ good _,_ Jordan thought, happily, and so called out his name as he walked towards him.

When Adam turned and saw him, a look crossed over his face that was somewhere between _horrified_ and _constipated_ and it made Jordan stop short.

 _He’s changed his mind_ , he realised, mournfully. _My own stupid fault for latching onto this like the only positive trajectory in my life at the minute._

He must have looked as crestfallen as he felt, because Adam hurried the short distance between them.

“There’s been a bit of a change of plan,” he said, quickly.

“Oh,” Jordan said. He looked down at Adam’s wrist, where he was nervously fiddling with the cuff of his jacket.

“It’s not – “, Adam flicked up his wrist to look at his watch, and then through his eyes skywards in a plea to the heavens. “I’m so sorry about this.”

“It’s alright,” Jordan said dully, remembering that Adam had been very rude when they’d first met and, really, he should have expected this.

Adam started. “No, no,” he shook his head, and then laughed a little nervously. “Oh, God. We’re still going out, idiot.” He laughed again, and Jordan felt it echo a little around his own mouth, but he wasn’t sure if he was relieved. “I’ve had to contend with… some other… forces. Anyway, I’ll explain in the car.”

“The _car_?” Jordan echoed, looking at the subway sign in confusion.

“Yes, the car.” Adam didn’t give Jordan much time to process it, not least to register how he was sort of thrown, by just how easily Adam’s hand had slid around the inside of his elbow. Here he was: charmed by how Adam’s touch was both soft and insistent, that he was trying to be a little bit gentle and this, somehow, negated that Jordan was being manhandled into an unknown, slick-looking black sedan by an almost total stranger.

Worse: after Jordan had been so gracelessly been pulled sideways into his seat, Adam leaned the whole way across him to pull the door shut after him. When he did, he had to pause, recalculating the length of his reach as he swiped for the door handle. His hand came to rest on the outside of Jordan’s knee for balance with the same soft, yet insistent, pressure and so much of him was suddenly in Jordan’s space that Jordan could feel the impossible weight of the inch of air that separated them.

He didn’t breathe, lest he inhale something that might be Adam’s scent, and make the whole thing worse for himself.

When Adam lunged for the door handle again, he leaned with him and pulled it shut.

“Thanks,” Adam said, a little breathlessly, straightening himself but only enough to be _even more inside Jordan’s space_. His hand still rested just above Jordan’s knee for balance. Jordan’s blood pounded against the inside of his ear. Then Adam turned towards the front seat.

“We’re late, Milly!”

Jordan tore his eyes away from the curves of Adam’s cheekbones in his immediate proximity and let them follow his instruction to the driver’s seat. In the rear-view mirror, the man driving – suited right up to the top of his neck, with the jawbone of an Action Man figurine and his expression hidden behind very dark glasses – said, in a very gravelly voice: “seatbelts”.

Adam was already sitting back into his seat. “He’s kidding,” he told Jordan, with a deftly explanatory tone.

Despite the sunglasses, Jordan had the impression that when Milly tilted his chin towards the rear-view mirror he was looking directly at him. And he wasn’t kidding.

The car roared to life as it pulled away from the sidewalk. Jordan found he had a few seconds to gather himself and so went back to focusing on the part of Adam’s explanation that was somehow the most baffling.

“ _Forces_?” he managed.

Adam sat the whole way into his half of the back seat now, with the air of someone who wasn’t used to sharing the space. Jordan wondered if his question should have been more along the lines of why Adam looked like someone who was used to being driven everywhere. As far as Jordan was concerned, people with _drivers_ existed only on another, higher plane of Manhattan to the one he inhabited. They certainly didn’t come to Harlem, which had been heavily gentrified lately but was still not _fancy_.

“ _Mmmh_.” Adam’s curse was hidden behind his hand as it passed over his face. He looked at Jordan from the gaps between his fingers, preparing himself. “Oh, God. Where do I start.”

“Anywhere at all,” Jordan said, dully, “would be good.”

“I was meant to be somewhere else this evening,” Adam began, “but I couldn’t quite manage to give my excuses without mentioning _you_.”

 _Weak_ , Jordan thought, remembering how he’d dodged this revelation in a similar scenario today. “And?”

“And so, that thing I was meant to be doing? Those forces?” Adam swallowed. “It’s my mum.” Jordan opened his mouth, not really sure what he had to say, when Adam cut across him: “look, she really thought she was helping. Because… well because I guess that bit isn’t important,” he finished in a rush. He tipped his head back to look out the window. “I only have a handful of blocks to figure out how to get us out of this.”

“ _This_?”

Jordan was distracted when Milly veered into the bus lane upfront and began speeding his way up the street, much to the indignation, it seemed, of all of the drivers they left in their wake. Jordan was pretty sure they weren’t meant to be in the bus lane, but then again, what did _he_ know?

He was brought back into the car by Adam’s mutterings of distaste. “ _Lovista’s_.”

Jordan started. “Excuse me?”

Adam stretched one arm across the inside of the car window and turned to look at him, distinctly pinched around the eyes. He smiled, a little tiredly and some of his fringe – lighter than air – flopped down over his forehead.

“Of course,” he said, “you’ve never heard of it.”

“Yeah, I haven’t. A bit like you’ve never heard of a subway – if you’re trying to get across town, it would take half the time.”

Adam’s smile widened into a grin. “Alright, fine. My mother has pulled some strings and got us a tasting menu reservation at a truly ridiculous fine dining restaurant. She thought,” he sighed, “she was doing me a favour.”

 _Fine dining?_ Jordan wondered. _Like, I’ll need a tux?_ He looked down at his battered Vans, his jeans and his puffer jacket that he’d thought looked passably cool and unoffensive when he’d put them on. Back when he thought they might be going out for a beer and some overpriced fries. _What am I thinking? I don’t even own a tux!_

“Do you normally bring people to fine dining restaurants…?” _On a first date_ , Jordan wanted to finish. Except, he wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, or what this was – just that Adam was sitting very close to him, and that he looked stupidly good.

Adam shrugged to this, non-committal.

“The chef is a family friend so if I don’t show up tonight I’ll probably be written out of the will.” He said it sarcastically enough like this was a threat levied often, and one Adam wasn’t quite-so-sure he didn’t believe. “Look, I’m sure I can get us out of this by the fourth course. I’m sorry,” he said, as though it had just occurred to him, “I probably should have just cancelled on you. I only got the call a few minutes ago.”

“It’s fine,” Jordan replied, politely. He was aware that there was a third person in the car, driving, and that Milly was listening to every word. Also, weird and decidedly uncomfortable as this situation was, he would have felt a lot worse if Adam had cancelled on him.

“No,” Adam insisted. “It would have been kinder.” He ducked his head to look out the window again. “We’re here.”

Jordan let him clamber out after him, straighten his coat – much, _much_ fancier than Jordan’s, properly tailored, and almost disgustingly snug around his middle – and head the several short steps across the pavement to the door of the nearest building. Jordan had paused before closing the car door, wanting to thank Milly for driving them there, and feeling guilty that he had just _assumed_ Milly drove Adam around for a living.

“Thank you!” he called eventually, closing the door. Milly didn’t even hesitate and sped off down the bus lane again to be quickly swallowed by the traffic.

Jordan spun around just in time to see Adam disappear under a nearby awning and through a revolving door. He hurried after him.

Jordan was no stranger to the vast lobbies of New York’s newest office developments: an interior rising like a cathedral, all glass and Italian marble. Except, usually Jordan was in these kinds of places to work, normally helping out Lo or Virg who were the only two actual attorneys at the clinic. Usually, it was to get sneered at by proper lawyers.  

Already at the reception desk, Adam beckoned him over. Jordan made it just as the receptionist put the phone down.

“He’s waiting for you, sir,” he said, very politely to Adam, and with a look of brief distaste towards Jordan. “Please,” and he indicated the security gate.

It was only when the elevator dinged closed – the two of them, remarkably, the sole occupants – that it hit him.

The driver? The last minute fine dining? The ridiculously well-cut clothes? The shrug, when Jordan had asked if expensive restaurants were something that was _normal_? Even, the speed at which their coffee order had been served up in the place Adam had picked?

“Who _are_ you?” he asked, out loud. He was almost afraid of the answer. He was sure he’d never seen Adam before, and he hadn’t been approached on either morning they’d shared coffee, as would inevitably have been the case if he were some high-class celebrity.

 _He’s too nice to be a member of the mob_ , Jordan thought, with just a little bit of selective memory.

Adam looked at him. Looked _up_ at him, as though very aware that the view under those lashes was that of a puppy who had just been caught being very bold.

“Just Adam,” he promised, “for a little bit longer, okay?”

Jordan hesitated.

“Okay.” Then, remembering where they were headed. “I already know I can’t afford to split the bill for this place,” he nodded around the lift. Bunches of fancy holly wreathes were shoved up into the corners, to remind everyone that there was a holiday coming up.

Adam smiled that stupid smile at him, all earnest and relieved, and Jordan forgave him for everything. “Don’t worry about it. Like I said, we’ll be out of here by the fourth course.”

“Fourth?” Jordan said. “How many are there?”

“Nineteen,” Adam said, with no humour. “Dejan’s a nice guy. Just… let me do the talking.”

“That’s not going to be a problem,” Jordan quipped, and Adam just about looked like he was going to relax, his shoulders dropping slightly. Jordan realised too late that it was a reach. There was just the slightest brush of Adam’s fingers against the outside of his hand – his skin sizzled under it – when the elevator dinged open.

“Fourth floor,” it said, with a cool, British accent.

The story of his afternoon so far, Jordan followed Adam out into the hallway where they were met by a waiter with a fancy uniform and a large, cloth napkin draped over his arm.

Jordan frowned. There were small beads of sweat around the waiter’s brow, and his name tag – “Joe” – was on slightly sideways, as though he’d scrambled with great effort to meet them just as they’d arrived. Instead of openly greeting them, he bowed his head and, yes, his chest was heaving a little.

“He knows we’re here, I take it,” Adam said, very politely, as though he hadn’t noticed his state. “How, are you, Joe?”

“Good,” Joe said, looking relieved. “I mean,” he remembered himself suddenly when he saw Jordan, and indicated towards the door at the end of the hall, “follow me, sirs.”

Adam caught Jordan’s eye and mouthed, _he’s new_ , and grinned.

The restaurant was empty – sprawling in a mass of white-clothed tables which stretched out to the window, a view of the park just visible between the towers opposite. Jordan was surprised by how quiet it was.

Since he was letting Adam do the talking, he decided to also mimic his movements to the best of his ability: Adam waited for the chair to be pulled out before he sat,  Adam allowed Joe to take his coat, Adam sat poker straight in his chair, Adam did not remark on the insane amount of cutlery laid out with precision in front of him, Adam did not lean out of the way when one of the three tall wine glasses lined up by his plate was filled by Joe, who seemed to have now regained a little composure.

“We’ll start you on a _Don Rofoldo,_ ” Joe explained the wine, “Argentina, two thousand and fifteen.” He wiped the neck of the bottle on his napkin, in a swift motion that Jordan was _very_ impressed by.

“Is he going to come and say hello?” Adam asked, as Joe now added wine to Jordan’s glass. It was barely a splash, not even a mouthful.

“Right after your first course,” Joe said. He slipped away easily, as Jordan imagined might be remarkable if the restaurant were even half full.

“I like him,” Adam said fondly, “he’s so much more chatty than Dejan’s usual staff.” He said _Dejan_ with a fancy, European inflection. “You don’t have to drink the wine,” he added, hurriedly, as Jordan measured up the glass in front of him.

Jordan barely had time to remark on just how little wine was in the glass, when Joe reappeared balancing two small plates on his hand.

“To set the tone,” he explained, placing Jordan’s plate down in front of him and it somehow slid in at exactly the same distance between his opposing collections of knives and forks, “we have a seaweed cracker,” he leaned over and ran his little finger, hovering only just above the food, down the line of green dots on the plate, “with sorrel. You should find,” and he said it with such conviction like this wasn’t something he could possibly have just rote learned, “that it adds extra tang to the cracker, which should be foamy but still with a,” he clenched his fist in demonstration, “crunch. And it compliments wonderfully,” he said, about the second crisp on the plate, with thin strips like ribbons, “the sardines.”

Jordan couldn’t believe he was being handed food, in a portion roughly equivalent to the circumference of a Pepsi cap, and then told _how to enjoy it_. It was like a live-action a restaurant review.

Joe looked at them expectantly.

With his fork, Adam halved the cracker in one, swift motion and carefully levered it into his mouth. He chewed, and nodded thoughtfully, and a now-satisfied Joe then melted back into the restaurant.

Adam met Jordan’s eye and coughed a little as he swallowed.

“Relax,” he said, “it’s just a fancy cracker.”

“It’s meant to be _dinner_ ,” Jordan hissed. Nineteen more courses of _this_? He was going to _starve_.

“Just try it,” Adam said, enjoying himself.

“I’m a vegetarian,” Jordan replied, dully, motioning to the sardine cracker.

Adam paused, with the same astonishment that came with the revelation that Jordan drank lattes.

“ _Really_?” he asked, absolutely fascinated.

“Really,” Jordan said, and waited for the usual, meat-lover’s lecture.

Instead, Adam looked back over his shoulder in the direction Joe had disappeared in.

“Okay,” he said, “swap with me.”

Nimbly, and with what Jordan suspected was a lot of practise in this restaurant particularly, Adam reached the whole way across the table and scooped Jordan’s sardine cracker up with his fork. Then he repeated the gesture in the opposite direction. He paused.

“Is seaweed vegetarian?” he asked, with genuine worry it wasn’t.

 Jordan made to answer, when out of the corner of his eye he saw someone coming across the restaurant towards them and shoved the offending cracker into his mouth.

 _Hmm_ , he thought, as it dissolved like foam on his tongue, _still not as good as one of Mo’s pizzas._

“Adam!”

The guy – who could only have been Dejan - was tall, dressed similarly to Joe, but with some stains down his apron and his hair and forehead riddled with sweat from the kitchen. He had a neatly trimmed, smiggy beard that just screamed _chef._

Adam got up from his seat and completely unflinchingly went into the clasping handshake Dejan offered.

Quickly, Jordan swallowed the rest of his cracker and hastily wiped his mouth with his napkin.

“When Sharon called,” Dejan was saying, “and asked for the favour, I said absolutely no problem – I owe you after the – “

“Yeah,” Adam cut across him hastily, “thanks. Mum always knows the best way to use up my favours.”

It was kind of snarky and Jordan would have been very, very mad if it had been leveraged in his direction: Dejan did seem to have gone through a lot of effort, however misplaced, to open early and compile a complete series of suitably weird, artsy food concoctions in miniature – if the first course was anything to go by. But Dejan grinned and clasped another hand around Adam’s shoulder, giving him a small shake. And then, he saw Jordan.

“Dejan,” Adam began carefully, “this is Jordan, Jordan this is Dejan – we went to school together – “

Dejan had already let go of Adam and had taken two very quick steps in Jordan’s direction. Jordan had leapt to his feet awkwardly and his chair made a horrible squealing noise as he did.

“ _Hel-lo_ ,” Dejan held out his hand to shake, almost purring. Behind him, Adam’s face screwed up slightly with petulant frustration. But then it cleared.

Jordan, still resolving to say as little as possible, accepted. “Nice to meet you,” he said, equably.

Dejan, still shaking, looked him up and down. Jordan had the uneasy feeling it was so an accurate description of him could be recounted elsewhere.

“How did you two meet?”

Jordan had the feeling he was addressing Adam.

“Oh, you know,” Adam shrugged. “What’s our second course?”

Dejan finally let go of Jordan’s hand.

“Asparagus tarts,” he declared, waving one hand in the air, “so light that the biscuit crisp pastry almost evaporates in your mouth!”

“Sounds delicious,” Adam said earnestly. There was an edge to it that Dejan did not seem to notice. Jordan had spent too much time, perhaps, drinking in all of Adam’s features. But it worked: Dejan was already backing away to the swinging door into the kitchen, that was trembling a little: as though someone – Joe – had been standing there watching everything unfold.

“I thought you were going to get us out of this,” Jordan said, as they sat down.

“I was,” Adam explained, “but you distracted him, obviously.”

“ _Obviously_.”

“At least asparagus is vegetarian,” a pause, “right?”

Jordan’s barely contained laughter cracked his lips into a smile.

“It’s,” he started, then changed his mind, “have you _never_ met a vegetarian before?”

“I’d just assumed,” Adam replied, “you know. Urban myth.”

Jordan literally could not tell if he was kidding.

“Yes,” he decided on, in the end. Still smiling stupidly across the table at him. “Asparagus is a plant. That’s sort of the whole point.”

“I’ve never – “, _met a vegetarian before_ was lost as Adam’s face creased into desperate laughter and he smothered it quickly in the folds of his jacket at his elbow.

Jordan was laughing too – it was infectious, something normal in this ridiculous line of events that made Jordan remember why he was here. As Jordan leaned into his laughter Adam lifted his head and there they were, inches from each other, and the irrepressible, devilish gleam from Adam’s eyes was all that Jordan saw or thought about.

“Eat your crackers,” Adam told him. Then, regaining some composure: “I’m really sorry. About this. It’s not,” he suddenly looked silly with leftover giggles and embarrassment, “how I thought this evening would go.”

 _How_ did _you think this evening would go?_ Jordan wanted so, so badly to ask. But there wasn’t a universe where he was brave enough to. Instead, he shoved the second cracker into his mouth.

“Could we,” he suggested, after swallowing it rather hastily. Despite the foamy texture it seemed to scrape the whole way down his oesophagus. “Could we run?”

“He knows where I live,” Adam said, all faux-solemnly, like he was pleased Jordan had thought to ask.

The second course arrived. Again, Jordan could not fault the presentation, just the portion size.

Jordan was waiting for Joe to be fully swallowed by the restaurant interior again when Adam sat up straight in his chair.

“Listen,” he said, “I have an idea – “

Somehow, Jordan already knew what it was. It had everything to do with how he’d just grimaced at the tiny green pastry placed in front of him.

 “You’re going to tell him I’m sick.”

“I have to do it now, before we eat any more. Then he _might_ believe that it’s just unlucky gastroenteritis and not his food.”

“ _Gastroenteritis_?” That was weirdly specific. “Ouch. Gee, thanks.”

Adam looked like he was going to grin, then he hesitated. “You’ll never be able to come back here again if you’re the scapegoat. He won’t forgive you.”

“Wrong,” Jordan started to say, without the thought even passing through his head first, “I can come back with you.”

He didn’t mean it like it sounded. He meant to say it in theory, if he owned a tuxedo and happened to ever _want_ to eat nineteen portions of weirdly unsatisfying food instead of his usual Friday pizza ever again, the only way he would ever get back to a place like this was with someone _like_ Adam. But it came out like: _no, let’s do this again._

Adam glowed at him for a few seconds and then pushed his chair back.

“I’d better go before he gets too deep into course number three. Wait here,” he said, and made a beeline for the doors into the kitchen. This time Jordan spotted Joe’s head disappearing behind the door when it looked like Adam was heading in that direction.

Jordan was left on his own, feeling suddenly, weirdly, light-headed – as though he wanted to will the lie to life. It wasn’t the food that had him like this.

Adam had been _glowing_ at him ever since they’d sat down and Jordan didn’t quite know how to process it. This was all so _easy_. Adam with those eyes and wide smile and the fact that a flirt always felt like it was about to roll off his tongue was exactly the kind of person that would have put Jordan on high alert, because intimacy was not something Jordan wanted to run headlong into. When it happened, Jordan wanted it to be _real_ and not something he gave just because someone else wanted it.

 _And yet_ , he thought, _look how far that mantra has got you_.

The way Adam was so obviously coming onto him had a different edge to it. Or maybe _edge_ was the wrong analogy. There was nothing sharp about it, like if it happened it could still happen on Jordan’s terms, and it could be wholesome and soft. Like a bread roll.

 _I’m starving_ , he thought, with actual pain.

Adam was gone for an age. Jordan shivered: no one came in or left the restaurant, which made the fact that it was perfectly set, very shiny and ordered while surrounded by glass and suspended above the trees a little bit too quiet, a little bit eerie. Jordan did have to admit that Dejan did have a _very_ nice restaurant.

It wasn’t an altogether terrible place for a first date, if impressing someone was the end game. In fact, Jordan might even have enjoyed the experience if he’d had some kind of warning. And if he felt like he could comfortably afford it.

He was already standing by the time Adam came back into the restaurant, forgetting momentarily that he was meant to be floored by gastroenteritis.

Adam nodded towards the door of the restaurant and they both went for it, scrambling towards the lift. They reached it, Adam snorting out laughter as he gasped for breath. Out of nowhere, he pressed Jordan’s jacket to his chest. The touch was firm and insistent and not at all shy. The elevator opened.

“Quick,” Adam said, “I only just convinced him not to come out and check on you.”

What they’d done was really stupid and childish. But Adam clinging to the railing inside the lift for support as he gasped, his cheeks all round, and his hair falling out a little from its hold was enough for the exertion in Jordan’s lungs to spread to the tips of his fingers and up his neck, to the ends of his ears, and for him to think: _that was_ fun.

Adam eyed the slowly reducing numbers of the lift and seemed to force himself into a semblance of composure, gasp by gasp.

“Look,” he began, straightening his jacket. Jordan pulled himself upright with the wall of the elevator. “I know I haven’t been straight with you, and this was all probably a colossal waste of your time – “

The elevator opened on the ground floor. Adam looked like he was going to continue for a second, until they both felt the eyeballing of the hoard filling the lobby, waiting to get into the lift after they vacated it. Jordan, on a reflex of politeness drummed in over the years, paused to let Adam out first. Adam passed very close as he did. Jordan felt his eyes all over him.

A filling lobby as everyone left their desk on a Friday was not the place for the conversation Adam clearly wanted to have, and the pavement outside was only one iota better. But then Milly pulled up and Adam went to open the door, and stopped. It was here, between the blacked-out sedan and the tide of people pulling each way up and down the sidewalk, that they seemed to find some space.

“It wasn’t a waste of my time,” Jordan said, quickly. Trying to articulate in a few words how Adam was fascinating, dashing and fun; and Jordan was unlikely, even in this massive city, to find someone quite like him by accident again.

“No?”

“No.”

And then it happened again. Adam’s hand stretched and it touched, just briefly, very deliberately, the edge of Jordan’s – like permission. Jordan hadn’t realised they were so close. He was so warm that he hadn’t even noticed that his gloves were still tucked into his pocket.

“If you’re…” _not busy_. _If you’re sure that it’s_ me _that you want to do this with, when I have such unrefined taste._ “Look,” Jordan said. “There’s somewhere else we can go.”

Mo’s Pizzeria was fairly understated from the outside, a bit like the guy himself. Inside, it was lit enough to still be cosy and the booths were pressed into the walls at the sides, as squishy as they were round; with Mo’s counter up at the back so it could face out into the kitchen. The wagon-wheel sized specials were on full display under the glass at the counter. The first thing you noticed was the smell: Jordan worked above it every day and yet every week the wonder of it bowled him straight over. This was not the place for you if you didn’t like either bread, cheese or garlic.

The second thing that you’d notice – and without fail, everyone did notice – was the width of Mo’s smile as he waited for you up at the counter to welcome you to his shop. It was his most astonishing feature, past a mop of tight curls and shoulders so relaxed, they indicated a blood pressure low enough that it may actually stop altogether.

“Hendo!” he said, spreading his hands out in delight. Mo was always happy to see him, or any of the guys from the clinic, here. It could be that he just liked everyone. It could also be that their habit of coming here was single-handedly keeping the place afloat. “How are you this week?” He turned, giving Adam another large slice of his grin, saying “welcome!”

“ _Hendo_?” Adam asked, in a low voice.

“It’s my nickname. At work,” Jordan replied, quietly. “Mo does the best pizza in the whole _state_ ,” he said, a bit louder.

Because Mo wasn’t stupid, and probably interpreted the way Jordan had leaned towards Adam as he replied a little nefariously, he said, completely on purpose: “how are your friends? Are they coming?”

“They are,” Jordan promised, not looking at Adam. He’d already scanned the restaurant. He felt a little guilty knowing that without his help, his colleagues upstairs would be stuck there for at least another hour. “We’re going to eat first, though.”

“Sure,” Mo chirped, tapping the screen on his till so it lit up his face a little when it came to life “what would you like?”

“This is not at _all_ ,” Adam said, sliding into the booth ahead of Jordan, who was carrying a large plate of pizza slices, “what I expected.” He pulled off his coat, lifted his jumper over his head and his shirt was pristinely white underneath.

Jordan slid into the booth opposite him. He had wanted to sit beside him and drink in more of that aura Adam seemed to give off, the one that made him feel a bit light in the head.

“It’s not quite _Lovistas_ ,” he agreed, hoping he remembered the name correctly. _But nicer_ , he thought, smugly. He had a new appreciation for pizza after the seaweed crackers.

Mo had certainly made the most of the small space. It reflected nothing of the poky offices that they worked in upstairs. But Mo, knowing the discrepancy, had let them run a few clinics a week in here so that none of their most fragile clients had to climb just to get their help. He even provided pizza. He was a regular patron saint.

Jordan relayed this and hastily added, “I don’t know if your friend Dejan would be keen on running a legal clinic in his restaurant.”

Adam raised a scathing, lofty eyebrow. “Don’t worry,” he said, “plenty of legals go on in his restaurant.” He reached for some pizza, and Jordan didn’t query what he meant, even though he had a feeling.

Adam still hadn’t told him who he was and despite the fact he was now scarfing down a very large slice of pizza across from him, Jordan had seen the way people reacted around him – Joe, Dejan, the waiter in the coffee shop, the receptionist. A kind of serene deference that only came with a powerful position. A powerful career. A powerful name?

And yet he had just dropped red pizza sauce straight onto his white shirt, right in front of Jordan’s eyes.

“ _Shit._ Pass me a napkin,” Adam said, looking at the long, red drip down his front in horror, “ _stop laughing_!”, as Jordan roared. He poured water into his glass and dabbed his napkin into it, and furiously started to rub it down his front. It worked a bit but not totally: a tiny shadow of the stain still remained, and his shirt was now very wet and it stuck to the curves of his chest. “Stop,” Adam said now, a little softer, a little embarrassed.

“Mo doesn’t have a fix for that one,” Jordan admitted. “You might just have to button your jacket closed.”

Adam wrinkled his nose a little and reached for his jumper. The v-neck at the front hid the stain, but not the top of the wet patch Adam had rubbed around it. “You’re lucky the pizza’s nice,” he said, waving the slice a little, and deliberately over the plate.

“We’re now even on the muffins,” Jordan agreed.

“Stop,” Adam said, his snickering muffled by the amount of pizza in his mouth, “ _laughing_.”

“I can’t,” Jordan said, definitely still laughing, now eating around the edge of his crust.

They chewed in silence for a few seconds, punctured only by some slight coughing on Adam’s end that might have been a stifled laugh.

“You don’t ask many questions,” Adam said.

“No,” Jordan agreed, dropping his eyes to the plate. He was afraid to ask questions, in case it revealed Adam to be the kind of person he didn’t like, just on principle. He came across them a lot in his line of work: the sort that threw money around, and never took any responsibility for their actions, just by nature of the size of their silver spoon. Because Jordan already really liked Adam, he was going to be pretty disappointed with himself if it happened to be the case.

“But you have some. Questions.”

“Yes.”

“Alright,” Adam said, steeling himself by raising both of his elbows onto the table and leaning across it. “I said you could ask me later. You can ask me,” he offered, “now. I’ve really dragged you through the pits this evening.”

 _You have a funny definition of “the pits”._ Jordan looked at him for a long minute. The softness of his hair, the length of his lashes. He leaned forward too.

“Alright,” he began. He looked down again: at the mountain of pizza still on the plate in front of them, and what a sixth sense had told him: that his hand sat right next to Adam’s on the cool lino of the table. A small voice told him to do it, and everything in him wanted it. He stretched his fingers, and brought them carefully down, in a long stroke, along Adam’s knuckles. Adam’s skin was as warm as it was soft, and a small collection of freckles peppered the back of his hand, gave contours to the blue of his raised veins.

“I…” he breathed, looking up. He didn’t know what he expected but he wasn’t afraid to look, given how Adam had tried this on _him_ twice already. Adam sat watching him like a coiled spring, where before he’d glowed Jordan was now reminded a little forcefully of a flare. Waiting for the question but a little bit afraid of it. Jordan couldn’t decide if it was good or bad, but definitely Adam in this state looked _very_ good, and Jordan’s touch had put him in it.

Adam’s gaze flickered away, only slightly - but it was enough to give Jordan warning. He turned around in his seat and pulled his fingers sharply away from where they had been resting on Adam’s hand, and yet not quite fast enough to avoid the detection of any of the crowd of people now standing at the end of their booth all in different stages of incredulity.

Andy’s jaw looked like it had recently unhinged. Chambo had his hair pushed back through his fingers, looking at Jordan like he was absolutely scandalised: “the _errand_?” he gasped, delighted. Lo stood at the back, towering over everyone as usual and wearing that stupid, Disney prince face of his. Finally, Trent was _not_ looking at Jordan.

Trent was looking at Adam in total, star-struck awe. “Adam _Lallana_?” he gasped.

They all looked at Adam now, who drew his hand slowly back to his lap in a distinctly defeated motion.

“Hi,” he said, weakly, suddenly looking very small under all of their stares.

Jordan felt like he’d been smashed over the head with something hard. _Lallana. Adam_ Lallana.

The name rang around his head. A big, old, Gilded Age name: synonymous with the Kennedys, the Vanderbilts. Jordan freely admitted that his knowledge of popular culture was extremely poor, but even he’d heard it before. They had made their name in steel. Concrete. Responsible for most of the twentieth century skyline. What had Adam said? _I project manage property sales?_

Jordan felt his face drain of colour as he connected the dots.

Jordan was surprised that Adam even had a job. And all that perfect tailoring? Adam probably had never picked anything straight off the shelf in his life. Dejan opening his restaurant as a _favour_? Dejan had opened his restaurant in fear that it would probably close if he didn’t, and the fact that they had run out of there made guilt grow and swish caustically in the base of Jordan’s stomach.

Adam sat across the table and watched, with clear hopelessness, as this all dawned on him. Like he knew these were the kind of things that would run immediately through Jordan’s head.

And then everyone burst into life.

“Budge up,” Chambo said, clambering into the booth.

“Mr Lallana, _sir_ ,” Trent followed on the opposite side, his hand outstretched to shake, _gushing_ , “I saw your feature in _Forbes_ in October and may I just say – “, he was cut off by Andy leaning across him to shake hands too, gabbering something in such deep Scot that Jordan couldn’t make it out. Lo slid in after Chambo, turning towards the counter and raising a long arm to catch Mo’s attention.

“The usual, please, Mo!” he called. Not that it mattered. Everyone was helping themselves to the plate already there.

“You _sly dog_ ,” Chambo was saying through a mouthful of Adam’s pepperoni, moving in closer to make more room for Lo, forcing Jordan down the seat, around the edge of the table – when he met Adam coming the other way, making room for both Trent and Andy and their questions. They seemed to have moved on from his _Forbes_ article: “do you have a Ferrari?”, “I read that you have _two_ Ferraris,” “what are you doing with _Hendo_?”

Maybe it was Andy’s last, oblivious question. Or maybe it was because Jordan could see clear lines of tension running up the tendons Adam’s neck from the scale of their very insistent ambush. Suddenly unable to hear Chambo, he turned towards them slightly, lifted his arm and placed it around the back of Adam’s seat. He glared at both Trent and Andy with all the ferocity he could muster – honed, of course, over occasional bursts of acrimony over the last peanut butter cup in the office - until they both withered back a little in their seats: _leave him alone._

For the second time that evening, his work colleagues fell into an unprecedented, astonished silence. But there were unintended consequences to the move, too. Adam’s neck was close to where Jordan’s arm rested, and it was very, very warm. Adam, like everyone else, looked at him with surprise – but with an edge to it, like reverence. And from under his lashes.

Lo’s hand was still in the air.

“You know,” he said, very calmly and in a way that reminded them all why he was the only qualified lawyer present. “I saw an empty booth beside the door.” He got up, giving Jordan a strange look that he couldn’t read.

Chambo hesitated and looked like he was going to add something else, only his eyes were riveted on the place on the back of the bench where Jordan’s arm sat flushed with Adam’s shoulder. Trent and Andy looked at each other, looked very guilty and retreated; Trent even mumbling a “sorry, Mr Lallana, _sir_ ,” as he reversed.

Chambo was the last to disappear down to the other side of the shop.

“Tomorrow,” he said jamming a finger in Jordan’s direction, “I want to know _everything_.” And then they were all gone as fast as they arrived.

Under him, Adam’s breathing was shallow. “That was _incredible_ ,” he managed. Jordan realised, too late, he had been staring at Adam’s mouth and thinking about it. This close to Adam he couldn’t breathe.

“Yeah,” he agreed, weak in the sudden return on peace to the space, “they’re pretty intense like that. _All_ the time.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Adam started to say, when he saw Jordan begin to lift his arm away, he pressed his hand down onto Jordan’s knee again for leverage, stretched his neck and kissed him.

Jordan hadn’t been expecting it, but then again, he had been aching for it for days. Adam’s lips were as full and as soft as they looked, and they asked a question.

Jordan answered by sliding his hand around the back of Adam’s neck – right so his fingers ran through soft hair at his nape – and lifted him deeper into the kiss. The hand that rested just above Jordan’s knee curled into his skin, and every hair on Jordan’s body stood on end. Adam’s lips parted: the inside of his mouth was warm.

There was a small rap of knuckles at the other end of the table. It seemed to take them an age to disconnect, as if every other feasible position caused an ache. And then, when Jordan had pulled back enough to let them breathe, there were Adam’s eyes.

 _They’re the most beautiful I’ve ever seen_ , Jordan decided, dizzy, the feeling more post-coital than how very PG that kiss had been.

“Adam,” said the source of the noise, a gravelly voice that Jordan recognised – and hated – instantly.

“Mmmh?” Adam asked, turning the edge of his jaw into Jordan’s hand to look. His cheeks were all mottled. It was _wonderful_.

“We can expect paps in a few minutes,” Milly was saying, “there was a Twitter mention.” He still had his glasses on but looked distinctly displeased. “Just to remind you,” he was giving Jordan a warning look, Jordan could tell, “you’re meant to be in a different restaurant.”

“Ah,” Adam said, clearly still surfacing slowly. “ _Right_.”

_A twitter mention?_

_Trent,_ Jordan thought, darkly.

“Paps?” he asked Adam, only just realising he meant the press, not quite able to reconcile how Adam had gone from being well polished and a little ordinary to a full-blown celebrity.

“Only when it’s quiet,” Adam said hurriedly. “It doesn’t happen often.” He gave Jordan’s knee a soft squeeze.

Jordan barely had time to take it in, because now Mo stood beside Milly at the end of the booth, and, for God’s sake, booths were meant to be _private_.

“I overheard,” he began, apologetically, smiling in his usual way: like a sun. Then, to Milly: “there’s an alley out the back if you need to bring a car around, he can come through the kitchen.”

Milly looked at Adam. Adam lifted his hand off Jordan’s knee.

“Okay,” he said.

Mo beckoned, and Jordan wasn’t sure why, but he expected that to be it: that Adam would get up and leave Jordan sitting there by himself. Except that wasn’t what happened. The hand that had been on Jordan’s knee now fastened around the inside of his elbow and, with more force than Jordan had been expecting, he was yanked along after him.

Mo motioned them behind the counter, Milly having long since disappeared – Jordan wondered if there was some Lallana exception for parking tickets, like there was for driving in bus lanes – and Adam followed through unapologetically.

“I’ll be back,” he told Mo on the way past, making him roar with laughter. Mo then slapped Jordan on the back and said, “keep him.”

Adam continued to haul Jordan through the short kitchen, almost blindingly brightly lit and that smelled overwhelmingly of bread. The door onto the alley was open, tendrils of freezing winding their way into the roasting pizza kitchen. Adam let go of Jordan to pull his coat on.

“Milly’s not here,” Jordan said about the open door, a little dully, remembering that his coat was still sitting on the seat.

“You’re right,” Adam said.

So, this was where they had their second kiss. Jordan took Adam’s whole face in his hands, feeling his cheeks pressing against his palms when the kiss grew, hearing the small noise Adam made against his lips when Jordan lifted him right in against his body.

“I,” Adam was saying. The car was here. Jordan didn’t want to let go.

“I still have a lot of questions,” Jordan said, as Adam made to move away. The only thing he could think to say.

“Right,” Adam wheezed, wiping his mouth, “right.” Then he took another step towards him, and kissed him again, his lips closed and so, so soft. A promise. Goodbye.

He disappeared into the back seat of the car and was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All fine dining descriptions food descriptions came from a review in a Sunday newspaper supplement!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a smut warning because I know it's not something anyone has come to expect from my fics. I definitely could have used less words in this chapter and, oh my god, no one is more aware of this than me. "It takes a village" has been worked to death but thank you to Booperesque, SixPonderous, knockmeforsix and mm_nani!!!

It had started to snow. Jordan could see it fluttering slightly down from the deep grey of that vast cloud overhead. It was light, and fluffy, and would become annoying and menacing very quickly so he resigned himself to putting down his pen and enjoying the view from his desk while he could.

It was nice to be able to take a couple of indulgent minutes, he told himself, despite the many indulgent minutes he’d already taken in the last few days. Nice to look out into the cold knowing that there was the entire warmth of his apartment behind him.

He had work to do – a lot of work – and he had been putting it off criminally until five minutes ago. He had a small mountain of email print outs in front of him and the changing fonts as the correspondence evolved weren’t helping his concentration, even though fact-gathering was something he was usually quite good at. He probably should have given this job to Trent, now that he thought about it.

And yet. He couldn’t think about anything for too long, and it was why he’d been putting off work.

His few hours with Adam replayed and replayed in his head. There was so much for him to think about and he had spent so much of the last day telling himself _not_ to think about it.

Adam kissing him was the memory that his body seemed to want to remember the most. It kept betraying him, filling his nose with the smell of the kitchen where they’d kissed, bringing his fingers back to the tickle of Adam’s hair under his fingers. He thought about how Adam had kissed him gently, more gently even than the way the snowflakes drifted down towards the ground outside, and so much warmer. He had thought about the way Adam had kissed him so often since Friday that he was sure he could not possibly be recalling the moment properly anymore, that he had been warping and embellishing bits and pieces of the memory until it now no longer resembled anything that had actually happened.

Obviously, there were also parts of the evening his _head_ wanted him to remember more.

He paused now. In a movement he had repeated so often that muscle memory dictated it, he slid his laptop from where he’d purposely hid it under the debris of his desk. He opened it up, tapping his fingers against the edge of the screen a little impatiently as it turned on. His internet browser was still open from earlier.

His fingers hesitated, rearranging themselves over the keys, and they typed _Adam Lallana_ into the search bar. They came to rest on the return key, and, for at least the fifth time that day, stopped.

_I can’t undo this_.

If he looked up Adam, right now, revealing his profile in the city’s social elite, what he really did, how much money he really had and – worst of all, something told him – a catalogue of his past dating history thanks to trashy gossip magazines, he knew wouldn’t be able to remove any of it from his head at a whim. He couldn’t know, right now, if any of the stuff he read about Adam would be remotely true, or how much of it would so drastically alter Jordan’s perception of him that he wouldn’t be able to relegate any of it to the back of his mind if he saw Adam again. And he so badly wanted to see Adam again.

He started tracing the edges of the return key very carefully with his finger.

He had asked to be _just_ Adam. Adam already understood that he was a different person when it came with his name. His expression had made that pretty clear when he’d watched Jordan joining the dots. 

Jordan couldn’t decide how he felt about it. On the one hand, they were still strangers, and Adam knew almost nothing about _him_. He’d said _for now_ like he intended to explain everything in time, and, Jordan supposed, one could respect that.

But on the other.

Jordan knew enough about Old Money in the city to know they didn’t _mix._ So what was this, really? Jordan was sure he’d levied the theory that he was a social experiment at Adam before, but now it was starting to take real weight. Or maybe it was some kind of rebellion on Adam’s part, which was why he’d chosen a deliberately low-tier café in Harlem as his target. If Adam was trying to make someone in his family uncomfortable by dating outside the designated zone of socialites, the fact that Jordan worked for a charitable organisation, without an awful lot of money or prospects, had probably been a bonus.

But.

But you didn’t just kiss your social experiment like _that._

Jordan finally conceded, and switched into the images tab. _Just a small concession_ , he told himself, and one image stood out starkly from the rest.

Adam – it was clearly Adam – was standing on the deck of a yacht, half turned towards it and pointing to something out of the shot with one hand and cradling a beer in the other. He wore a cap turned backwards, a bright blue pair of shorts, a vest, and nothing else. It was definitely taken for the kind of trashy gossip magazine Jordan had been hoping to avoid – the camera lens was clearly stretched to it’s furthest to make the shot. But because it was a picture there was no context, and that was already a relief, so Jordan clicked into it before he could stop himself.

The Adam in this picture had the body of an athlete – it was long, in proportion exactly everywhere and muscled enough that he was defined despite the clear fact he was relaxing on a yacht. Jordan supposed that attaining such a state was something you could pay for, if you had the means, and he suspected that Adam did. But his eyes – inches from the screen – dropped down Adam’s back and to where he curved out through the back of his shorts. And they stayed there, for far too long.

His phone buzzed loudly and lit up on the table beside him, and he snapped from his trance – recoiling like he’d been burned and nearly tipping the chair from the force of it, rubbing the vision of Adam’s butt through his shorts from where it burned into his corneas.

Chambo had already called twice under the guise of work but very much to get the story out of him, but it wasn’t that. It was, of all people, Adam.

He quickly closed his laptop, his face _burning_ , still pushing the image to the back of his mind. He’d only been on one real date with the guy, it was _far too soon_ to think about what he might look like with his clothes off.

_If I_ took _his clothes off._

He rubbed his face furiously to bring it back to earth.

Adam had already texted once since Friday: a short query, almost in the middle of the night, as to whether Jordan had got home okay. Jordan had avoided the others at the restaurant and headed straight home – around the ring of photographers waiting patiently outside Mo’s restaurant, to add to the surreality of the evening - to stare at his ceiling, so he’d replied: yes. He hadn’t been sure of what to say to Adam’s response of _Good_. He’d stared at it for another hour before finally succumbing to sleep. Messaging did not seem to be quite appropriate for all the things he’d wanted to say.

_Are you free this evening?_

Jordan looked at the work spread across his desk in front of him, all of it urgent. No, he really wasn’t free.

_Yes_.

_Do you ice skate_?

Jordan frowned at the message. He had given the rink in the park a go a few times, if that counted?

_I have a couple of times._

Jordan’s heart started to beat very fast when he saw Adam typing his reply.

_Ever at the Rockefeller tree?_

No, because it was a touristy death trap. Also, because it was a ridiculously soppy date spot.

_Not yet_ , he replied, with a feeling he knew what was coming.

_I’ve always wanted to try!_ Adam said, then: _want to join me_? And the worst: _x._

Jordan froze solid in his seat staring at Adam’s kiss. His heart was really going now.

There was no way he wasn’t going ice skating, really.

_What time were you thinking?_

_When can you make it to midtown? I’ve got a thing. But let me know when you’re here._

A thing. Jordan knew better than to ask. He looked at his watch, creeping closer to six o’clock. The rink at Rockefeller was about to get pretty packed.

_I can make it in an hour._

_I’ll meet you at the 5 th av station. Outside the chocolate shop. _No kiss this time.

An hour was pushing it, and Jordan hadn’t showered yet, despite going to the gym that morning. He was also pretty sure that his nicest clothes were in the laundry pile he had been neglecting all week, and, on top of that, he’d have to wrestle with his contact lenses. But, he thought, as he got up so fast he felt a little dizzy, he would make it.

Fifty-five minutes later, he raced up the steps of the fifth avenue and fifty-third street station. He was almost never in this part of town, not unless his relatives spontaneously visited from upstate, and the place had almost completely changed since he was last here. He frowned at the brand new UNIQLO store across the street, pretty sure that he’d never seen it before.

He’d had the foresight to Google nearby chocolate shops, otherwise when he rounded the corner from the station onto Fifth Avenue he would have missed the Lindt store tucked into the building’s front. Everyone was suddenly much colder under the snow clouds, and he was having problems picking out Adam among the hats and scarves: but when he saw the light brown crest of Adam’s hair, he was then wondering how he could ever have missed it. Coupled with his smile when he saw him, Adam was the brightest thing among the sparkle of the shop windows in the grey of the evening.

“Hi,” he said, faltering a little. _Kiss him._

“Hi,” Adam said, a little shyly. The collar of his coat was turned up against the wind, and the tips of his cheeks and his nose were a little red.

Jordan could feel himself grinning so hard, he thought the elastic in his cheeks might snap. “You’re early,” he remarked.

“ _You’re_ early,” Adam replied.

Jordan thought: _screw the Google search._

“Thanks,” Adam was saying, “for coming.” He looked a little relieved. “I thought I might have weirded you out a little.

“Ice skating?” Jordan asked, as they fell into step, walking towards the pedestrian crossing.

“I was in there – “, Adam jabbed a finger towards the Rockefeller plaza, across the street from them, “ – all day and I realised I’d never done it. And I was thinking. Well, I was thinking about you.”

It was the kind of brass thing that Jordan was now used to Adam saying. But this time when he said it, the pedestrian light turned green and Adam stared quickly at the pavement as they started to walk.

“You thought I’d like to go ice skating?” Jordan teased. Then, a little more hesitantly, “I wouldn’t have needed an excuse to come and hang out with you.”

Now it was his turn to look quickly at the ground.

“Yeah, I _know_ ,” Adam said. They reached the other side of the crossing and he stopped, and turned, “I _know_. I’m not sure I understand it,” he was now scanning Jordan’s face, levelling it with him.

“Understand what?”

Adam’s eyes flashed across his face. They were still a little bit divine, even when they were narrowed like that.

“How come,” he said, “you’re so _easy_ on me.”

Jordan couldn’t help wondering if Adam was asking the question a little of himself. A little incredulously. And he thought: _I can imagine with all of this money no one ever takes him as he is_. And he looked at Adam, now all hardened by the notion, and despite himself he moved a little closer.

And he said: “it’s because I like you.”

He hadn’t meant it to be an echo of Adam’s own admission, as dubious as it had been, only five minutes into their second ever conversation. But after he said it, he realised it was true: a short cumulation of everything he’d thought that week. He liked how Adam looked, sure. A lot of it was that. But he also liked the person Adam was around him: fun, a little quippy and – he moved a little closer – very, _very_ soft.

Then, just when he thought they were going kiss again right in the middle of the city’s busiest street, Jordan’s mouth opened, and betrayed him.

“I can be harder on you.”

He only heard the sentence properly after he said it, and it was _so_ dumb, and so very full of innuendo that he recoiled slightly. The cold evening was a real antidote to the hot shame he felt.

He expected Adam to laugh, or, and he had been around him long enough to guess: match it with a smart quip of his own. Instead he said, a little weakly: “what do you want to know?”

His cheeks were red now, to match the ends of his ears. Jordan realised they were both a little guilty of over-thinking and embellishing their few moments in the pizza shop booth on Friday.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Adam shrugged his coat around his shoulders a little more and started walking again.

“Well,” he began, looking at Jordan and then quickly away again when he fell back into step, “I don’t know what you already know.”

“What would Google tell me?” Jordan asked, pretending not to notice that Adam slowed a little at the admission he hadn’t done any research, despite ample opportunity. “You said I’d hear it from you,” he added, as an explanation.

“You’re _full_ of surprises,” Adam teased, back to normal but a little too much. “Alright. You’d probably find out pretty quickly from Wiki that my family has been around, been _in business_ since around the nineteenth century. We’re into building,” he explained quickly, “steel, and concrete.”

“Almost all the buildings here,” Jordan said, looking around pointedly, “I did know that bit.”

“Right,” Adam paused, formulating his next sentence. “Well, we were. Maybe not so much anymore. The name comes down through my mum. It’s,” he took another second, “my name is double-barrelled, technically, but it would water it down a bit. I don’t think my dad has ever minded, really, they’re a pretty good team. Google would also tell you that I have a sister.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, and nephews.”

Then turned onto the block with the Plaza. Jordan could already smell the chocolate and Christmas spices. He got a little festive shiver up his spine.

“There’s lots written about our money,” Adam was continuing. “Image and Investment. It was a tabloid headline that’s become a bit of an ironic family motto. Because that’s what we are, an image. And, you know, that’s really what the business has become. There’s been a few scandals, I guess… you’ll probably see a lot of them. Swindling uncles, people who married in, things like that.” He wrinkled his nose a little, at the memory. “Nothing to do with _us_ anymore.”

They’d turned onto the Plaza and Jordan had made for the crowd that looked the most like the line for the ice skating. Except, Adam said “what are you doing? Over here,” and proceeded to skip the queue, heading for an igloo erected in one corner. Jordan had only just caught up when Adam waved his phone at the scanner the lady waiting at the turnstile held out, and she flashed a big smile at both of them.

“Welcome to the VIP section,” she sang, letting them through.

“You reserved tickets?” Jordan asked. “ _VIP_ tickets?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty cold out there.” Then, “it’s not _that_. I promise. It’s only a couple of extra dollars.”

“But I was going to pay for you.” Jordan hated that it came out whiny.

Adam stopped, unsure. He shook out the little frown that had formed on his forehead from talking about his family. “But you got the pizza,” he said, marvelling, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Besides, it was my idea.” He grinned, and relaxed, and Jordan thought, _I just can’t reconcile him with Hampton mansions and trust funds._ “I think we’ve got a few minutes. I’ll pick up your skates. What’s your shoe size? You,” he nodded at the confectionary counter, with bottles of water and a coffee machine, “can get the hot chocolate.”

The hot chocolate was hot water and a packet, and even though this did prove Adam’s point that it was not a true VIP experience, Jordan was never going to say no to making the most of it – filling the cups to their brim, availing liberally of the cans of whipped cream stacked beside the cups, and of the marshmallows which, by some miracle, seemed to have avoided the sticky fingers of the children running around the tent.

The place was filling up, the rink emptying after the last session. Jordan found Adam sitting at the benches and sat down across from him. Adam had started laughing the minute he saw him with the hot chocolate cups and took the one offered swearing colourfully, despite Jordan’s warning: “careful, they’re really hot!” He was still snickering a bit when he had to suck some stray cream from where it had dripped down the side of his cuff.

They set about strapping their skates on. As usual with rented skates, it was true grunt work: forcing your foot down the tight neck of the boot, pulling the straps loose, tightening them and fastening them down again in such a way that didn’t cut the circulation entirely off to your toes.

“I can’t seem to get this one loose,” Adam said, panting as he pulled at his last strap, down across his toes. “Fuck, it’s tight.”

“Let me,” Jordan said. He reached for Adam’s boot and lifted it to sit in the space between his feet. Adam’s strap _was_ tight, he had to lean over and hold the boot down around his ankle and press the fastening free with almost all of his weight. It was easier to adjust, then.

“Say when, Cinderella,” he grinned, looking up, and Adam threw back his head when he laughed. He had to slam the fastener back down with his palm. “We should have just got you a new boot.”

“Maybe,” Adam said, eyes glinting. He didn’t lift his boot away, rather preferring to leave it propped up between Jordan’s legs. If it was meant to elicit tension he did seem very casual about it. Jordan was far too aware of it still there when he sat back to pick up his drink.

Neither of them managed to avoid cream moustaches, especially with the beginnings of a moustache at all on your upper lip, and Jordan probably the most spectacularly. Adam laughed so hard he nearly dropped his drink. Jordan could see the quiver of each delicately flattened piece of hair, could see every laughter-worn wrinkle around his cheeks.

“Better me than you,” he said evenly, wiping off the cream with the end of his scarf. Just in case, it seemed, Adam stuck his tongue out and licked his top lip. Jordan snorted at his expression and spilled hot chocolate all over his glove. “Shit,” he said, as Adam howled, “I think the hot chocolate was a mistake.”

He leaned forward to place his cup on the ground out of harm’s way and Adam followed, propping himself up with his elbows on his knees.

“You still have some cream on your lip.” Adam’s breath smelled like chocolate.

“Here?” Jordan rubbed his finger along the edge of his mouth.

“A little to the left.”

Jordan knew this game. “Here?”

“No, _idiot_.” Adam’s hand lifted and curled under Jordan’s chin, tilting it up level with his face. “Here,” he said, breathed: Jordan wouldn’t have heard if he wasn’t so close. Adam’s thumb stretched across the top of Jordan’s lip, the wool of his glove tickling where he rubbed. Adam’s eyes fixed on the spot, blinking slowly, and he caught the edge of his tongue between his teeth.

All the blood in Jordan’s body _rushed_ south.

“There,” Adam said, again, in the same quiet, private voice. His thumb stretched and traced the rest of the way around Jordan’s mouth, the fingers curled in under his chin pressing down.

Jordan took it as an invitation and leaned towards him.

Adam stopped him, grinning. “Eager,” he teased.

Jordan reached, and let his hand come to rest on Adam’s knee. Adam’s eyebrow notched up, surprised.

“Thanks,” Jordan said, letting his hand press down a little as he spread his fingers, “for telling me about you.”

“I haven’t told you it all,” Adam said.

“No,” Jordan said, “I know. But…” he wasn’t sure how to say it. “You don’t know anything about _me_.”

“No,” Adam agreed, amused, “I guess I don’t.” Slowly, his hand dropped from Jordan’s cheek. Jordan let his thumb start to move, push against the fabric of Adam’s trousers. If it was getting at Adam the same way Adam’s glove against his lip had, he literally couldn’t tell.

“My family’s from upstate,” Jordan started, watching the fabric gather under his fingers. “Horse country. My dad is a retired detective, and Mom is a high school English teacher. I also have a sister,” he said, as Adam smiled, “and she lives quite close to my parents. I have a niece,” he finished, “for now.”

He stopped, and lifted his eyes. Adam was watching and looking at him a little curiously. He waited out the pause, as if to say, _anything else_?

“The guys you work with seem pretty interesting,” Adam said, a little casually.

“They’re fine,” Jordan said, defensively. “They grow on you. They’re all really intelligent, _so_ brilliant, it hurts a bit. But, you know. They’re a bit out of control, especially when it’s time for pizza on a Friday.”

Adam nodded thoughtfully. “You seem to be able to keep them in line.” When Jordan looked like he was going to query that: “on Friday. I mean you just _looked_ at them and they fell into line.”

“They’re not normally like that,” Jordan said earnestly. “ _Normally_ there’s no point in me telling them what to do.”

“You should do it more often.”

Adam was grinning at him when the buzzer sounded, and the people around them started to spill onto the ice outside. His hand was on Jordan’s elbow when they stood up.

“Have you skated before?” Jordan asked, as they made their way towards the door. All neatly trimmed, Adam stood out from the milling crowd of tourists and small children.

“Sure,” Adam replied. “Although the ice is pretty bad here, but it’ll be fun.”

“You’ve skated _here_ before?”

“No,” Adam admitted. “But there’s a lake near our place, in Zermatt.” Just at the end of that sentence, he seemed to stop himself a little late.

“Where’s that?”

“It’s in Switzerland,” Adam said, a little red and clearly not meaning to name drop. Jordan decided to save him and ignore it.

After the Zamboni, the ice was a little wet and slippery and there were an awful lot of people. If he nearly slipped the minute he stepped on the ice, though, he couldn’t blame the conditions. The air was suddenly very crisp outside after the warmth of the tent, all that hot chocolate, all that Adam in his immediate space. The Christmas tree towered about him, glittering, filling the whole skyline and it looked even more spectacular than usual from where he stood.

“Look out!” Someone tumbled into him a little from behind – he’d had the misfortune to stop right inside the gate to the rink – and Adam yanked him out of the way, right up against him. Jordan found he had to grab onto Adam’s middle to stay upright. Despite the coat, he could feel just how solid Adam was under it as he reeled to keep them both on their feet.

“Alright,” he was saying, Jordan imagined a little breathless from the effort and not breathless, like Jordan was, because of the adrenalin surge at the thought of what Adam might be like without all those layers of clothes.

Adam patted Jordan on the head. “We’re good.” Jordan didn’t want to let go, and did so only reluctantly winching himself upright. “I think we’re both going to have to watch where we’re going,” Adam continued, just as Jordan was about to let go, “didn’t you have glasses?”

“I did,” Jordan said, “I do.” He was a little surprised Adam remembered.

Adam wrinkled his nose a little: a sure sign of a flirt, or a tease. “They made you look like a proper statesman,” he said.

“Yes, well,” Jordan said, anticipating it, “it’s easier for me to kiss you without them.” And he grinned. And Adam went bright red, and almost successfully hid it by wriggling free from Jordan’s grasp and skating off into the crowd.

Suddenly, the image of Adam standing on the deck of a boat in ridiculously tight shorts slammed into Jordan’s head as he watched Adam sashaying away – not that the image could possibly be related, because Adam’s coat revealed nothing. But slowly Jordan’s temperature rose, and his fingers itched -berating a missed opportunity.

_Stop it. Stop it!_

Adam did skate with the grace and poise of someone who had been properly taught. In comparison, Jordan had taught himself mostly and only practised a couple of times a year, so was limited to mastering the basics such as keeping upright, avoiding the peewee skaters and turning with the occasional accidental twirl. And yet he could keep up, or Adam was willing to slow down to let him.

He just could _not_ seem to stop the itch in his hands, even through his gloves, that made him want to touch Adam. It badgered him _incessantly_ that Adam had been solid and warm, and so what his skin must be like under all those layers. In the end, it made for a very entertaining hour on the ice. Half of it was sort of an extended game of tag that neither of them had agreed. In a pattern, Adam would zip away and slow, and drift backwards lazily as he watched Jordan follow a little less elegantly, waiting until he caught up, moved right up to him, touched off his arm – before drifting forwards a few meters again, his face constructed almost totally around his smirk. But the distance became less and less, until he seemed happy enough just to glide along beside Jordan, moving to bump occasionally against his arm in jest, or to prompt him, or too move in a little generously to make room for someone skating up his inside. They were stuck now in the slipstream of the rink, as everyone moved as one in the same circle.

Jordan asked Adam about things and was fascinated to listen: there was nothing unusual about his answers, but it was as if he had a colourful angle or take on everything no matter how boring it was. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know any more about Adam’s circumstances, just because, like this, Adam seemed so removed from them.

So, he asked him about other things. He asked him about the early snow. He asked him about how early Christmas now seemed to come. He asked him why he’d thought Jordan was a cappuccino guy, when Adam himself drank his coffee black and unsweetened like he was trying to make it a hint to his personality (“But the milk makes it all weak!” Adam exclaimed, “it’s the taste that wakes me up and not the caffeine at this point. It grows on you, like olives. Anyway, it hasn’t exactly warned _you_ off, has it.”). Other coffee places. That maybe they could visit together (Adam acted like this was a completely normal reaction, and not at all as if Jordan’s suggestions were in anyway untoward), as the big clock ticked slowly towards the end of their session.

They were the last to trail slowly from the rink, Jordan turning to take in the might of the sparkling Christmas tree as he did, to commit it to memory. He was smiling, had _been_ smiling, so hard that he felt as if his cheeks had been frozen into place and felt a little stiff when they relaxed in the warmth of the tent.

The collected their shoes and set about hammering off their boots – this time, when Jordan helped Adam with his strap, Adam’s hand curled around his shoulder for support.

“Can we,” Jordan asked, as they left again through the turnstiles. “Can we go and see the tree again?”

“You _really_ love the tree, huh?” Adam replied. “And you really think I’d say no?”

They made their way through the crowd towards the steps up to the tree. The post-skating surge was so thick, moving through it was like being a salmon swimming upstream. Used to it from rush hour subways and with an inkling Adam didn’t have quite that level of experience, Jordan reached back and took Adam’s hand to pull him after him. Adam squeezed tight and didn’t let go, not even when they reached the base of the steps.

Enormous Christmas trees were not unusual in any part of town at this time of the year. Yet Jordan couldn’t stop looking at this one. The lights sparkled as the branches rattled a little in the wind. The faint sounds of Christmas songs rang a little in his ears, only just audible above the chatter of the crowd around them.

Adam came up another step, level now with Jordan’s shoulder, pulling at his hand enough to get Jordan to tear his eyes away from the tree and onto something arguably more magnificent.

Adam moved right up into his space. His cheeks were more red than the ribbons festooning the tree, one lip still half-caught under his teeth. His eyes were wonderful and big and round, and shone like glass, glittering back the reflection of the lights. And in a voice only for Jordan he said: “kiss me”.

Jordan had meant to kiss him like he had before: slowly, deliberately, softly – to feel all of Adam’s lips pressed to his. And yet it didn’t quite happen, because Adam’s mouth was a little open when Jordan pressed his kiss into it. He could, in that moment, only feel the warmth of Adam’s breath and the wet of his lips and his body reacted _forcefully_.

He titled forward, wrapped his free hand around Adam’s waist and pulled him in. He felt Adam’s hand pull free from his, felt it press to his cheek as they stretched to kiss Adam deeper. Adam made a low noise, like a gasp, and his arms wrapped the whole way around Jordan’s neck to pull him even closer. Adam’s tongue pressed into his mouth, and Jordan answered it, and he couldn’t breathe. And he kissed back, _and he kissed back_ , for as long as it took him to tether his brain somewhere in his head. And he, finally, remembered where they were.

“We shouldn’t do this here,” he murmured. He couldn’t steady himself enough to open his eyes. He meant: _this kind of kissing isn’t for public consumption_.

When Adam replied, his words were lost, churning them back into another kiss. And another. Jordan’s ears were ringing when they finally stopped, he was aware of a vague ache on the balls of his feet from standing, the milling of people around him, he was very aware of the weight in his trousers that told him it had been too long since he’d been kissed like that.

They broke apart, untangling slowly. Adam’s hand lingered around his waist. His eyes shone, wide and soft like butter, and Jordan couldn’t look anywhere else.

“Worth your while coming, yeah?” Adam said, smiling. Warm.

Jordan’s pulse was still slowing.

“When can I see you again?” he asked, in a rush.

“Whenever you want,” Adam replied. _Glowing_ , reflecting the Christmas tree. There was intent in that gaze, too, and it wasn’t helping _anything_.

They stood there for several more seconds, and the crowds moved around them, and looked up at the Christmas tree, and cooed, and didn’t notice Jordan and Adam standing there, uncertain, _reeling_.

In the inside pocket of his coat, Jordan’s phone started to ring. He felt Adam’s startled intake of breath as he let go of him and reached into his coat for it.

It was Chambo again. But that wasn’t the alarming part of the whole thing, because Jordan first saw the time.

“ _Shit_ ,” he whispered.

“What?” Adam came closer.

“I have to work,” he explained. He rubbed his thumb into the space just above the inside of Adam’s elbow where it rested. _It’s not you_. “I’m sorry, I have to go home.” He paused, and the words stuck in his throat. _He said I could see him again any time_. But Jordan wasn’t entirely sure if he could leave him.

Adam nodded, and gave him a soft push, in the direction leading him down the steps.

“No,” Jordan explained quickly. “My subway stop is this way.” He gestured in the other direction.

“Milly will drop you home,” Adam said firmly.

“No,” Jordan said quickly, “I – “

“Don’t be ridiculous. I dragged you out here, and it’s faster,” he tugged Jordan’s coat gently. “Milly will drop you home,” he said again.

They both turned and walked towards the road. Jordan had managed to let go of Adam and now the space between them widened like an impossible chasm. Jordan was so aware of it, the parts of his body that Adam had recently been right up against yearned for more. He was going to have to go for a cold shower the moment he got home if he was realistically going to get anything done tonight. That was, if he still felt like getting anything done tonight was a priority at all.

Jordan hadn’t seen Adam on his phone at any stage, yet the black sedan was sitting parked just outside the plaza, up against a kerb where he definitely shouldn’t have been parked. Adam opened the door to let Jordan in first.

“We’re dropping Jordan home,” Adam told Milly, the softness gone from his voice. Jordan blithely gave his address, and Milly cruised off into the traffic.

Jordan was sure this could in no way be faster than the train. But it meant he got to sit here next to Adam for more time, even though they were still far too far apart. He found himself mirroring Adam, both of them turned towards the window, both of them silent.

He knew what he needed to say. He replayed it again and again in his head as he tried to get it right. _Be cool_.

Milly sped up as he cruised down the wide streets, as the traffic cleared and the buildings shortened. He pulled up outside Jordan’s building, and Jordan looked up at it, took a deep breath and turned.

“Would you like to come up for a coffee?” he croaked.

Adam looked at him for a long minute. Peripherally, Jordan could hear Milly fidgeting in the front seat.

“Sure,” he said.

As Jordan climbed out of the car. He heard Adam say something to Milly but he was already focusing on the next hurdle, one he hadn’t contemplated since he hadn’t been so sure he’d get over the first.

“It’s a third-floor walk-up,” he said, nearly dropping his keys as he tried to angle them in through the lock.

“That’s okay,” Adam said, evenly. Too evenly. He was looking around the street, fascinated. Jordan had been fortunate enough to find a place in a nice area without roommates when he’d first moved here, with a landlord who went easy on him. It did have drawbacks though, like no lift (even though Adam seemed to manage the stairs fine) and the fact that his apartment was on a floor with two others, when they should really have all been one.

It meant that Jordan’s apartment was more like a large box, with one window at the end with his desk propped under it. His bed was pushed up to the wall beside it. To make the place look bigger – or smaller, he had never quite been so sure – this was split from the rest of the room by a step, half of the room on one side was made up of a couple of counters, a fridge and a hob, the other with a selection of wardrobes, and a curtain that covered the doorway to the bathroom. In the middle, Jordan had set up a small plastic table and a large armchair, just in case he wanted to sit somewhere and work with a different view to his desk.

“Is this,” Adam asked, stepping in after him, “ _it_?” He marvelled at the room, turning where he stood, stretching his arms a little as though he could reach to either side of the space with them. Which was an unfair exaggeration, Jordan though, given the place was at least four or five times as wide as Adam’s reach.

“Yes,” he said, still in the doorway. Maybe Adam wouldn’t hang around, he realised with real fear, when he was faced with the reality of Jordan’s rather modest living standards.

“But,” Adam said, still stretching, “you sleep, you cook and you eat… _all in the same room_?”

“In Manhattan? Yes.”

Adam laughed a little, and shook his head. Then he started to pull off his coat, folding it across the arm of the chair.

Startled into action, Jordan hastily closed the door behind him, pulled off his coat, unwound his scarf, hung them up quickly on the post at the back of the door.

“What would you like,” he asked, turning, quickly losing the battle to keep his voice steady “water? Or coffee? I think I might even have hot chocolate – “

Adam was all over him, colliding into Jordan with so much force that Jordan had to take a hasty step backwards, right up against the door. He’d been holding back earlier, Jordan realised, pulling Adam into him. Adam pressed tight, his arms wrapped the whole way around Jordan’s head, his fingers pressed into the space above his ears. And they kissed. And _kissed_ – Adam’s teeth drew along his lips, and if Jordan had thought he’d wanted him before he knew _nothing_.

One of Adam’s arms unwrapped from around his neck, he felt it slide under his arm, press against the door. Adam’s hips curled up and in his and the sensation surged up and down Jordan’s spine, as though each vertebra threatened to disconnect and float away. A need, raw and new, chewed at his insides as all of his muscles slowly began to tense, a warning he had come to know.

“Wait,” he mumbled, “ _wait_.” Adam was on his toes, leaning with his whole weight. Jordan was so very aware of it. He took his hand – he was now only vaguely aware of where it was, and how it had been holding Adam to him – and ran it up Adam’s cheek, tilting his face up close. His stubble tickled Jordan’s palm.

When he kissed him next, he made sure it was slow. If he was going to sleep with Adam – as everything about the way his body and Adam’s tensed, flushed together and suggested - he told himself sternly that he had to make the absolute most of it.

Adam let out a short huff at the change of pace. He stretched his body into Jordan some more, his angles softer than the door at his back. His hand moved again, left the door, ran down Jordan’s side, under Jordan’s top and against him. His hand was cold, Jordan felt the chill as Adam’s hand found the sensitive places across his chest, stretched and twisted the shirt as he ran his thumb down over the planes just under Jordan’s collar.

“I want you,” Jordan whispered, his voice a fraying thread. Adam’s eyes glinted at him, stretching his hand up to push his sleeve back up his arm, stroking the fabric back with his fingers. Jordan slid his arm out of his sleeve and looped it over his head.

Adam’s eyes swept down his chest and back up, his lashes like feathers. _Appreciative._ Jordan was so glad he’d decided to go to the gym that morning.

He lifted Adam towards him and brought his lips down against the top of his neck, kissed him there, kissed him there again, pressed his tongue against Adam’s skin. It was boiling hot.

Adam released him from the wall and Jordan’s freed chest took a huge breath. Adam looked wild, his hair slightly mussed, his jumper creased, his eyes _alive._

“Do you,” he asked, his voice thick, “have condoms.” And then he lifted his clothes over his head, shirt and jumper and all.

“What,” Jordan managed, using the door for support. What Adam was asking ran rings in his head, and it was already not how he imagined being with Adam for the first time would go. It was too soon for this. He had thought, in the car ride here, if he got this opportunity he would take his time, explore all of Adam with his hands, lie him on his back, undo him notch by notch. This was not what Adam was asking for. “Yeah.”

Adam paused, heaving, his sweater-and-shirt combination halfway down his arms. Jordan realised he was expected to get them, the condoms, but he didn’t, he _couldn’t_ , because stretched up and across Adam’s ribs – stark under the yellow light from Jordan’s apartment – was a long line of body art, a tattoo stretching and swirling along the contours of Adam’s side.

Jordan found his feet, and moved, slid Adam’s clothes the rest of the way off.

“What is it,” he asked, drawing his hand up Adam’s side, thumbing the route of the lines. From here, a knight, riding a wave that swirled up his side.

“Jord,” Adam began, his voice heightening to a whine.

“No,” Jordan insisted, “I want to see it.”

Adam paused. His lips shone, wet. He reached, and curled his fingers down under the front of Jordan’s jeans, just enough to get a grip to pull him, just enough to run through hair, tempt even more of Jordan’s blood down to his hips. Jordan couldn’t do anything but follow.

Adam was peeling off his shoes as he walked, turned, lead Jordan up the step to his bed. He stretched backwards, arching his back into the mattress, let Jordan climb up and sit across his hips, raked his fingers up and out of Jordan’s trousers very deliberately. It was as though he’d realised if he wanted some control, he’d have to reconcile the different tempos they both wanted this at, and meet somewhere in the middle.

Jordan met his eyes briefly – permission – before he curled over his stomach, pressed his lips to it, allowed his mouth to follow the lines his fingers traced along the contours of Adam’s tattoo, revealing more and more of the scene to it, the story. Adam’s skin was taught, his body strong: muscle wrapped tight around his ribs, his torso. His chest was all mottled blush and his neck stretched his head back into Jordan’s sheet as he hissed. _He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen_ , Jordan thought, dizzy from the rush.

As Jordan neared the bottom of his path – the tattoo continued, even under the lip of Adam’s trousers – Adam leaned up on one elbow, and with the other slid Jordan’s belt open, deliberately pushed down when he freed the button of his trousers, and paused. He let his finger glide, very purposefully, down the curve of Jordan’s hip bone.

Jordan’s body temperature _surged_ , as though he might come apart right there, sitting up, without Adam touching him.

Despite the state Adam had obviously worked himself into, he did manage to gather enough of himself together to form the beginnings of a smirk.

“You see how that feels?” he asked, deliberately lifting his hand. And then he started undoing his own belt, and Jordan joined, scrabbling almost desperately. He pulled down Adam’s boxers, pulled his trousers down the coiled strength in his legs, one at a time, until Adam was quite bare, his erection sitting straight up in the space between them.

_He shaves,_ was the first thing Jordan thought.

“You can see all of it now,” Adam said, coolly. He meant the tattoo, but also didn’t. He’d used that line before, with someone else, the enunciated tone was practised. Jordan could tell, and his stomach tightened. Adam knew, and looked like he was enjoying it but Jordan – he just had it, like the briefest feeling – felt it wasn’t because he was cruel, although it was what he was attempting to make it sound like. Adam said it to protect himself, to detach himself, to let Jordan know that this was going to be mechanical, not emotional.

Jordan knew better.

He leaned over very carefully and tongued down onto Adam, right at his underside, right where he knew the nerves would shoot up through Adam’s body and he felt them go, felt Adam tighten where he spread his hand across his stomach. He widened his lips, took more of him.

He felt Adam’s hands under his jaw, lifting him up and off him. Next, Adam’s mouth slammed down over his and he kissed him, desperate, open-mouthed, tonguing past his teeth.

“Don’t do that,” he said weakly, gasping. His legs stretched, wrapped around Jordan’s hips. “If you want me to last _five more seconds, don’t do that_.” Jordan kissed Adam back like the admission, that Adam was as wound up as he was, made him feel.

His arm tight around Jordan’s back, Adam pulled himself off the bed and up. He took Jordan’s hand from his hip as they kissed. He manoeuvered it around his back, pressed it down, until he’d slid Jordan’s fingers the whole way down his back.

Jordan felt the hint from Adam to finger him and tugged his hand away. The kissing stopped. Adam’s fingers curled tight into his back, and in his arms Jordan felt their bodies heaving.

“You want _that_?” He asked, panting. It was true, Adam had already asked for condoms, but Jordan thought he might forget, might compensate in some other way. If the first time they did this was going to be desperate and fumbly, he wanted to get it out of the way, and so when they moved forward Jordan could really savour having Adam so completely like that.

“I _want_ it,” Adam said, voice catching.

“This time?” _And not now, when I can’t appreciate you, just one touch away from the edge._

“ _Right_ now.” And he kissed Jordan again, tonguing hard against his lip.

“Alright,” Jordan managed. He was finding it hard to gather his thoughts. “Wait here.”

Gently, he placed Adam back onto the bed. Adam sprawled out, ran his hands over his face, his body _magnificent –_ sweat made him shine.

Jordan crawled backwards, his legs feeling limp as he tried to stand. He left Adam lying backwards, his feet still in his socks hanging over the edge of the bed.

Jordan pulled off his trousers on the way to the bathroom. He was barely able to right himself, the space between his hips and the inside of his thighs burned red hot, his dick felt too heavy. He fell to his knees in front of the bottom drawer of his bathroom cabinet. Debris spilled loudly onto the tiles as he pulled the contents out, but he was only aware of this viscerally. He knew the box of condoms was at the back, and he took the packets in his fist. His hand passed over the lube several times before it eventually found it, and he stared at it for a little too long trying to recall how long it had been in his drawer.

“Jord.” Adam’s soft voice, calling him back, drifted into the bathroom after him. Back in the room, leant up on Jordan’s bed on his elbows, Adam looked over Jordan once with his eyes, let them fall to his hips and stay there. His hand reached, stroked, as he sat there with his eyes all heavy. A small sound left his lips as he touched himself, as Jordan walked towards him.

_Appreciative,_ Jordan thought again. He thought about Adam’s neck, stretched tight. He thought about how he hadn’t really kissed it yet, not in the way he wanted to. So he chased Adam back down into the bed, and did. Adam’s pulse pounded against his tongue.

Adam’s hips moved – Jordan could feel how hard he was, bumping up and off his stomach – and he made to turn around under him. For access, Jordan realised, and he quickly pushed down on his hips to stop him.

“I want to see you,” he said, firmly.

Adam’s eyes were enormous. “Don’t say things like that.”

“I want to see you,” he said again, and when he was sure Adam wasn’t going to move, he sat back on his heels. He sounded more composed than he felt, especially with Adam’s thighs – long, and sinewed, and soft - draped along his hips.

He stretched a condom down over his finger, pumped some lube onto his hand, warmed it when he rubbed his palms. Adam wasn’t watching what he was doing. Adam was watching his face.

Jordan moved a little back onto the bed, felt where Adam had wanted him to go. He watched him, watched leftover tension in Adam’s cheeks, how he looked at him through heavy half lids. He spread one arm across Adam’s stomach, to hold him there. He watched his expression change as he rubbed at the skin gently to loosen the muscle under it, tried to curl his finger in, loosened the muscle some more. Adam’s mouth stretched open in a silent gasp when he took Jordan to the first knuckle. His fists bunched into the sheets. Jordan thought: _as much as he says he wants this, he’s still too tense._ He tried again, watching Adam’s forehead unknot, but not fast enough, and he rubbed his own hips a little down against the sheet, feeling it wet.

He leaned in and took Adam halfway into his mouth, and Adam’s hand ripped the sheet up towards him, and he relaxed, and Jordan’s whole finger fit now. Adam loosened more as Jordan moved it, as Jordan moved to caress him as gently as possible with his tongue. Adam grew hotter under it.

He lifted his head. Sweat-wet strands of Adam’s hair stuck to his temples. When Jordan stretched for the lube again, the insides of his elbows were soaked. It was so hot.

He fit his second finger into the condom. In a way that was more mechanic than the moment deserved, he applied more lube and moved it in. Adam opened for him now, he’d reached down and pulled one of his knees back. His other hand closed over Jordan’s on his stomach, squeezed.

Jordan couldn’t tear his eyes away, would have sat there forever watching the small movements in Adam’s face as he moved to Jordan’s fingers curling, spreading.

Adam sat up. “Let me touch you,” he said, looking down. His palms were slick when they ran up Jordan’s underside, his thumb muddling into the wet at his tip. Tremors of desire burned into Jordan’s spine, closed tight into his chest, they seemed to burn straight into him from Adam’s eyes.

Adam’s hand let go of the inside of his own knee as he pulled himself up, as Jordan pulled his fingers out. Adam plucked another condom off the sheet, made a big deal of peeling the wrapper from it. He lifted himself closer, Jordan helping with his hands on his hips, so close that Adam had to rest his forehead on Jordan’s shoulder so he could look down to see what he was doing.

Jordan felt the pads of his fingers sweep over him – every nerve ending in his dick had never been so alive – felt the condom move down over him, sitting, as it always did, a little uncomfortably.

Adam dragged his lips up his neck. Jordan couldn’t take much more of this.

“Do you do anything wrong,” Adam murmured into his ear. His fist moved up and down over him, lube on his hand, readying him. “Is there anything you don’t do absolutely _perfectly_.” And he lifted his hips again – made to turn around again, Jordan realised.

“ _No_ ,” he croaked – he had been so sure his throat had been too tight already to allow his voice up. He pressed his hands into his hips to stop Adam moving. Adam’s eyes, already so beautiful, smouldering; watched him carefully.

“You want to see me,” his whispered. When Jordan didn’t answer, he said: “okay.”

One hand curled around the back of Jordan’s neck, into his hair. The other inched carefully back across the sheet. Adam stretched his legs around him, leaned back enough so Jordan could take himself in one hand, push right up against Adam, push – very slowly, very carefully – into him.

Adam closed his eyes, his lips pursed, his neck stretched. Fingers tugged at the hair below Jordan’s crown.

Adam let go of the sheet, curled up, smoothed that hand – a little sticky – around to hold the back of Jordan’s head, pressing his ear back flat to his skull. When he moved, he pressed right up to Jordan, took all of him, started to kiss him. He moved up further, to sit high up across Jordan’s hip, curl his body down onto him when he lifted his knee up under Jordan’s arm, under his shoulder.

Jordan’s head swam, Adam’s tongue was hot in his mouth, Adam’s body was hot where it tightened around him. He lifted Adam a little with his hands, moved his own hips back – slowly pushed back into him and felt Adam’s lips wobble against his mouth, felt the kiss break.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Adam whispered, pressed their foreheads together, as Jordan moved into him again. And again. He tried to keep it slow, savour it, draw it out. His pulse slammed against his neck, against his hips, inside his chest. Adam was all he saw, and he was so beautiful.

Adam’s heel pushed into his back, and he moved, too, to meet Jordan. The movement gained pace, gained force. Adam let out small noises of strain, of desire, they landed on Jordan’s lips. Even like this, their bodies were impossibly close. Their skin, slick, pulled where they touched. Adam’s knuckles rubbed into Jordan’s stomach as he worked himself.

Jordan couldn’t be sure how long it took him to draw to a climax. Too long, not long enough. Adam, resplendent, so close – was the only thing he saw. Sounds spilled from Adam’s mouth now, drove him on. Jordan thought, _I have never had anything like him in my arms,_ saw Adam’s eyes glaze over, thought, _he is so beautiful,_ thought, _I am going to come._

When he descended, Adam’s head was buried into the space between his shoulder and his neck. Where everything had been a rush, everything slowed. He was still in Adam, an impossible weight.

At some point, his hands had left Adam’s hips to curl around his back. Their bodies met with the force of their breaths, sweat stuck their skin together. He became aware of the smell, of how Adam smelled musky, drenched.

Adam’s hand unwound itself from between them, weak, patting, pressing Jordan’s chest away. More than Adam’s weight lifted from him when he pushed up. Came off him. Gently, Jordan let him down onto the bed. So gently.

On his hands and knees, he saw Adam below him properly. Saw how he stretched a little stiffly, saw his eyes flutter closed. His whole chest shone, taught. There were bitemarks on his shoulder.

Jordan hadn’t realised how much he had wanted him, how many of their interactions until now had been about desire, how it had weighed against him, how it had manifested itself constantly in tension.

Right now, it was different. It was so longer a hot flame licking against his insides. If anything, it smouldered, like grey coals – less intrusive, not as bright, or as obvious, yet much warmer. Like it would burn deep into your skin where you touched it.

Adam’s eyes opened.

“If you’re going to fuck me like that,” he whispered, with a bit of a watery smile, “you have to kiss me afterwards.”

Jordan didn’t need prompting. He leaned down and kissed him, softly. Adam was still breathing heavily behind his closed lips. Jordan felt the last throes of his own climax bleed out through his shoulders.

Adam took his face in his hands, laughing softly, rubbing his thumbs into the crevices of Jordan’s cheeks.

Jordan started to feel sticky, was aware there was still a condom on him somewhere, itched.

“I’ll be right back,” he said softly, and sat up.

The bed was covered in debris. Pieces of condom wrapper, a sock, the lube bottle lying on it’s side. He gathered them up. The condom he’d used on his finger was gone, lost somewhere in his duvet. He’d have to wait for his next trip to the laundromat, something told him, before he made that discovery. _Ugh_. He was only just recovered enough to find it disgusting.

His legs felt light as he walked. In the bathroom, after he’d dumped everything he could peel of his hands, off himself into the bin he leaned over and gripped to the sink. The cold ceramic was solid, which was a relief, because at the minute Jordan’s whole world pitched at a strange angle. He stared for a long time at himself at the mirror, how there were less lines of his face, how there was a strange, wild look behind his eyes. Parts of his hair stood on end, patches of red exertion littered his chest. Having sex with Adam and being struck by lightning was an analogy he had not expected.

His throat felt a little raw, like sound had ripped from it against his best effort, right as he’d finished. He hadn’t even noticed.

Eventually, he regained some semblance of control in his knees. He lifted his towel from where he’d hung it across the shower curtain and dampened it under the tap.

There wasn’t much that could be done about the sweat, which was everywhere, but he wiped himself down anyway. The towel had warmed by the time he’d finished.

He washed his hands, had to focus really hard on washing his hands once, twice. He peeled out his contact lenses. Reached for his glasses balanced on the sink. He wondered, vaguely, if Adam was thinking about round two. It was clear when he came back out into the room that he wasn’t.

Jordan slid into the duvet beside him, stretching back to put his glasses on the table beside the bed, to turn off the light.

“Are you asleep?” he asked.

A smirk. “No.”

Jordan paused, moved over a little, right up beside him.

“How are you feeling?” This close, Adam was still a little blurry without his glasses.

Adam’s eyelashes fluttered open. He turned his head on the pillow.

“Stupid question,” he murmured, sleepily. He turned his body now, stretching his hand out across Jordan’s chest.

“Stay with me,” Jordan said.

“I don’t know why you think I wouldn’t.” Adam curled into him now and rested his head down on Jordan’s shoulder. Jordan lifted his chin a little, to make more room for him. He marvelled at how well Adam could fit, and how close. He thought about how Milly must still be waiting in the car outside. And then he didn’t.

Adam’s fingers brushed against his chin, drew him back from the edge of sleep.

“You fuck everyone like that, don’t you,” he said. The expletive verb sat a little awkwardly in the space. Jordan thought: _is that all we did?_

“Like,” Adam said, “of course you do. Of course, you put everything into it like it’s the last thing you’ll ever do. I’m shocked,” he said, “that I don’t have to fight people off just to ride you.”

Jordan swallowed, and he felt it move down past Adam’s forehead. He reached the shoulder Adam lay under, and Adam moved to let him curl it around the back of his head, stroke up through his hair.

“You really have a _mouth_ , don’t you,” he said. He let his hand run down Adam’s neck, rub into his shoulders. “Good service?” When Adam started to laugh, he added: “you haven’t even had my hot chocolate yet.” And he was laughing too. All it did was make him feel like he was floating a little more.

“Shut up,” Adam wheezed. He curled his arm the whole way across Jordan’s chest.

Jordan paused, and took a breath deep enough to disturb Adam.

“I did look you up. A little. Just pictures.”

“Hmmmm?”

“Just one picture, actually. You, er. You have a very tight pair of shorts, and you’re on a boat.”

Adam snorted. “That could be _anywhere_.”

Jordan let his hands drift down Adam’s back. There was no way to say: _you look better here than the shorts let me to believe_ , without it sounding really randy. So he let his cheeks burn a little, and stretched his fingers a little, and Adam sighed a little, and moved closer.

And they held each other. And slept.

* * *

 

Jordan wasn’t sure what jerked him awake, but he decided, after a few confused seconds, that it had been because Adam moved. Half of his body felt very cold. There was still a slight tremor in the mattress. He looked over where Adam had been and saw, blurred, the white expanse of his back from the other side of the bed.

He thought: _the light_. He hadn’t pulled the blind, and the lamps from the street shone bright and orange into the room. Adam had curled away from it. 

As he turned on his side, and followed, his myopic eyes focused on Adam’s back a little better. There were little dimples in his shoulder blades where the muscles relaxed.

“Adam?” he asked.

Adam moaned.

Jordan shifted closer, ran his hand around Adam’s front, up over his hand stretched into the pillow. He moved right up, resting the side of his nose against Adam’s neck, breathing him in. He stretched his legs, wound one foot around Adam’s ankle.

“Okay,” he whispered. Adam curled a little, back to fit against him.

“Jord,” he started to say, then stopped. Jordan lay there and waited for him to continue.

“Adam?” he tried. “Ad?”

But Adam was already back asleep.

* * *

 

Jordan only woke the next morning when the water hit the floor of the shower. He frowned, his arm still stretched across the bed.

Then he heard the yelp. It took a few more seconds to process it.

“Turn it to the right,” he croaked, wakened a little by the relayed memory of just how cold the water in his shower could be. Sound just about left his mouth.

The shower stopped.

“ _What_?” Adam’s voice, all warbly from the bathroom echo.

“The tap,” Jordan called, sitting up. His mouth felt really dry. “Turn it to the right!”

The shower started again.

He sat back and propped one of his arms up on the pillow next to him. He rubbed the sleep blearily from his eyes and reached for his glasses, letting everything in the room finally come into focus. The alarm clock on his bedside table told him it was nearly six in the morning. He leaned forward to crane his neck and look out the window, but it wasn’t snowing.

His thoughts drew back to the bathroom, to the contents of his shower and the steam seeping out from behind the curtain in the doorway.

_Adam_.

He was still thinking about Adam when the water cut off again. He could hear him shuffling around the bathroom, and he emerged, buckling up his trousers.

Jordan felt a lazy smile pull at his teeth. Adam’s chest was still damp, and his tattoo stood out against the skin on his side. In the proper light, Jordan could see how the muscles bunched around his shoulders, especially when Adam lifted the towel from his arm and began to furiously rub it through his hair.

Jordan started to laugh. He felt it rattled down through his chest.

Adam stopped, and lifted the towel off his hair, splayed every way like a bird’s nest.

“What?” he asked, with a nervous giggle. It made his shoulders shake as it grew. “ _What_?”

Jordan shook his head. “You’re awake.”

_“You’re awake_.” He started folding the towel and pushed his hair back. The damp strands stuck together. “Do you have a spare toothbrush?”

“Spare?” Jordan asked. He rubbed his hand off his chin as he did a mini inventory of his bathroom drawers. He then remembered that their contents were spilled all over the floor, and whether or not he had a spare toothbrush should have been obvious. “No,” he said, snorting.

Adam shrugged, and tossed the towel over the armchair in the middle of the room. When he reached the bed he sat sideways across it, placed one hand on the mattress either side of Jordan. He was grinning, wide like Jordan was grinning, and so wonderful, and Jordan realised why he was asking about the toothbrush.

When they kissed, he curled his hand under Adam’s jaw to lift him closer. His glasses bumped off the top of his nose.

“You’re right,” Adam murmured, still smiling. He flicked the frames gently. “They _do_ get in the way.”

Jordan let his hand spread over his cheek, scratch against his stubble. Adam was all soft and relaxed, leaning against Jordan with all of his weight on one hand. His eyes – all those swirls of caramel in his irises – shone, grew.

With more emotion than Jordan thought he could possibly fit into one word, he whispered, “hey.” When Adam went red, he cleared his throat. “Are you hungry?” An afterthought. “We could get breakfast.” _You could stay, and breakfast doesn’t even have to happen._

“I have to go home and change before work,” Adam said. He looked a little smug before adding, “I can’t show up in clothes that just spent the whole night on your floor.”

“Can’t you?” Jordan asked. He wasn’t used to smiling this much first thing in the morning.

Adam looked down when he lifted his hand to place it on Jordan’s thigh, under the duvet. “I _wish_ ,” he said earnestly. He went red to the tips of his ears, and he was so much more disarmed than he had been on their previous dates, and so _gorgeous_ , that Jordan leaned right in and kissed him again. It was long, like neither of them wanted to stop the press of their lips, and when they broke apart it was with a huff.

“How about coffee,” Adam murmured, his grin shy. He brought one finger pensively down Jordan’s lip. “Your pick, I think. It’s your territory around here.” He stopped, and somehow managed to go even _more red_. “Also,” he sat back, and looked around – embarrassed, “I, uh. I appear to be missing a sock.”

* * *

 

Andy was chewing furiously on his lip as he came into the office.

“Hendo,” he said. He was flicking back and forth through the booklet in his hand. “Hendo, I think I’ve _somehow_ managed to make this report without your bit on those emails.” He frowned. “God,” he scratched his head, “it’s just gone nine and I’m _already_ having an off day.”

Jordan froze, his hands suspended above the keyboard of his laptop. _Caught_.

“It’s alright,” Trent piped up, from the other side of the office, “I’ll help you fix it.”

“Thanks, Trent,” Andy said, non-committal. He reached the end of the booklet, closed it and flipped it back to the start again. He licked the edge of his thumb generously and started to flick through the pages again.

Jordan grimaced. He would, after all, have to use that report.

“I’m sorry, mate,” Andy was saying, something about his accent making it all the more forlorn. “I can’t believe I missed it.”

“You didn’t,” Jordan said.

“Hmmm,” Andy said, not really listening, still flicking between the pages.

“You didn’t miss it,” Jordan continued, “because I’m typing it up right now.”

This made Andy stop. It made Trent turn the whole way around in his chair. Next to him, Chambo lifted his earphones straight off his head. Jordan suspected he’d been wearing them as earmuffs to block out the cold of the office, rather than anything else.

“But,” Andy said, confused, “you were going to write it up over the weekend.”

“I did say that,” Jordan agreed. He cursed his past self, for normally being so punctual and meticulous.

“But it’s not here.” Andy cocked his head. He looked like a confused terrier.

“I know, I…” Jordan paused. He didn’t have an excuse ready. He’d got in early, and had sort of hoped he could speed through the task and have it finished before anyone noticed. “I didn’t do it. I…” his voice caught a little: his body bringing him forcefully back to Adam – Adam in his arms, Adam’s voice in his ear, his lips against his neck – “… I didn’t get around to it.”

Andy frowned. The book sat limp and forgotten about in his hand. “Why?” he asked. “Are you… sick, or something?”

At this, Chambo burst out laughing and they all turned to look at him, alarmed.

“ _Sick_?” he said. “ _Look_ at him, Andy,” he pointed, “he’s glowing like he just spent two weeks in the Maldives. What do you _think_ he was doing all weekend.”

Andy gave Jordan a long, hard look. He jabbed his finger at him. “Ah- _ha_! It’s _who_ you were doing all weekend, isn’t it?”

Trent looked quickly between the three of them. “Guys,” he whined, “what’s going on?”

Jordan could feel himself going really red, between the interrogations and just how _insistent_ his body was that he remembered _everywhere_ Adam had been. He started to type again, one hand attempting to rub the grin from his face, feeling very red, knowing he was looking bashful and giving it all away. “Give me half an hour,” he said, “I’ll get this to you.”

He already predicted how he denial would be read. Yet he didn’t mind, it reflected a little of how he felt inside, somehow.

Chambo kicked back in his chair, flinging his arms up into the air in victory. “I _knew_ it!” he yelled, “I called it!”

At the same time, there was a smack as Andy whipped the booklet down onto the desk exuberantly. “Jordan _Henderson,”_ he said, in mock horror, “is that a _smirk_? Out of all of us and _you_ have your head turned by a piece of ass?”

“Andy,” Jordan said, now laughing helplessly, “please, don’t say any more – _stop –_ “

“– honestly, one fine thing shows up with a wallet and you start slacking off – “

“– I can’t believe, Hendo, out of _all of us_ it’s _you_ getting some – “

“– he’d _better_ have _at least_ two Ferraris – “

“- _guys_ ,” Trent was trying to be heard over the mounting cacophony, “what is going on? What’s wrong with Hendo? _You guys, what is happening!”_


	4. Chapter 4

It was something Jordan didn’t often do –he knew better, certainly at this point – but craning his head the whole way back to squint up the façade of one of the taller, newer, shinier buildings on tenth avenue was enough to knock him backwards, if not dislocate his neck a few joints. He was certain it hadn’t been here the last time he’d ventured into this corner of the city. Maybe it was just an occupational hazard of hanging out with Adam, that he would spend his time being eternally dragged well out of his way. Even if it was only a few subway stops.

He checked his phone again, looking down and giving his neck some relief. He hadn’t been waiting _long,_ exactly, but he’d already checked his phone four times. Adam hadn’t cancelled, but he hadn’t messaged to say he was on his way or anything. The black sedan was parked rather obviously right at the pavement in front of the door, a definitive clue to his whereabouts. Jordan looked up again, squinting, wondering aimlessly which floor Adam was on.

_When can I see you again?_

Oh, God. Had he really said that?

 _Good service_?

The absolute _wrong_ approach to pillow talk.

Thoughts played on his mind. What would things be like, he’d mused, all day; now that they were past those first grabby throes of sexual tension. It had been a long time since he’d finished _quite_ like that.

He thought, too, about how differently Adam had seemed to expect things to go. Not that he was going to ask about it. That, right in the middle, Adam had tried to act cool and make the whole thing a process he held at arm’s length did play on his mind a little – not least because it was then almost completely forgotten as everything descended into a sweaty mess. A glorious, sweaty mess.

But Adam had stayed, like he’d asked. They’d had breakfast together in Clyney’s, a nod to having come full circle, squished in together on the bench. Adam had opted for a blueberry muffin without complaint, his hands lingering everywhere they’d been close.

Jordan smiled up at the tower block. This combination of shame and joy was keeping him warm through threatened bursts of sleet. Still, he shivered a little and made to move a little closer to the doorway, avoiding the people milling in and out of the building. He wondered idly if Milly was smugly watching him from the heated cab of the car.

“You’re here!” Adam had materialised from thin air beside him. Jordan had tucked his neck into the upturned collar of his jacket for warmth and hadn’t noticed when Adam slipped out the revolving door beside him. “Sorry I’m late,” he proffered one of the capped coffees in his hands.

“Thanks,” Jordan took it from him.

“It’s a latte,” Adam said, stammering a little. “I think.”

“Why?” Jordan grinned, and nodded his head in the direction of the very modern lobby he’d felt a little too shabby to step inside, and the very well-tailored suit Adam was wearing. “Did your gofer get it for me?”

Adam looked indignant, which meant he absolutely _had_ sent some assistant fishing for coffees somewhere out in the surrounding alleys. They’d probably even passed Jordan on their way back in.

“I,” he began, “did _not_ – “

He didn’t get to finish because Jordan finally let himself to what he’d been aching to all day and leaned right in and kissed him.

He fully expected Adam to finish his tirade when he finished, pulling back only enough to get the full view of his face. But Adam only looked disarmed for a few seconds before he seemed to right himself, and beamed. And then he kissed Jordan right back, stopping rather hastily. Jordan understood. Despite everything, around Adam his stomach still flipped with nerves.

“Are we going?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Adam said, looking at his car, parked and waiting for him, and giving Milly a sharp nod. It pulled slowly away from the kerb.

“Does he follow you everywhere?” Jordan asked. He had been following Milly’s slick navigation of rush hour traffic, but didn’t miss Adam’s nervous look over his shoulder, back towards the lobby of the building they were now walking away from. He decided he’d worry about it later, after all, his own friends had only found out that Adam existed by pure accident. Besides, he thought, as they began to climb the steps up to the high line: he had no idea where this relationship was going yet, apart from the increasing likelihood that it was an excuse to visit Manhattan’s top tourist destinations.

The high line where they entered it was still busy – but it’s familiar leafiness and loftiness gave it an aura of calm. They only had an hour until it closed, and the wind nearly whipped the tops of Jordan’s ears right off where the cold bit, but Adam was here, and he was wrapped from head to toe in coats and scarves and Jordan hadn’t stopped thinking about him all _day_.

The building that Adam had just been in loomed beside them.

“I was,” Adam closed one eye and squinted with the other when Jordan asked, “ _there_.” His finger waved vaguely towards the upper floors of the building.

“Are you,” he began awkwardly, “spread across town, or…?”

“Well,” Adam said, sipping, “if you have to ask.”

“I do. I didn’t realise concrete and steel involved such moving around.”

“Right,” he bumped his elbow a little against Jordan’s, teasing. “Well, the Lallana name isn’t so much about the buildings anymore. I work for the foundation.”

Jordan felt his eyebrows rise despite his best efforts.

“The _foundation_ ,” he said flatly.

“Sure,” Adam chirped, a little proud.

“But do you,” Jordan stumbled boldly on, “have to?”

Adam’s brow frowned in a little. “ _Yeah_. We work with charitable causes, all over New York. Someone has to make sure that the funds get to the right people.”

 _That’s not what I meant, but I’ll take it._ The idea that someone could exist, with enough money to not have to work and feel a little anxious about the bills at the end of each month, and yet _still chose to_ ; was an anomaly that Jordan knew existed but, at the same time, couldn’t quite believe.

“Says the guy who drives a Ferrari,” he pointed out.

“Who said I only have one?” Adam shot back, joking. When Jordan probably looked unsure whether or not to laugh, he added: “it’s not that cool. I work with the investment portfolio. I’m the _face_. It’s the only thing my family found room for me to do, and only after they tried very hard to talk me out of it. It’s not like what _you_ do.”

 _Yes, but I_ have _to work, and the people I work for are desperate._ “What I do,” Jordan said, a little stiffly, “isn’t _cool_.” It would have been a lot icier, he knew, if the breeze didn’t lift Adam’s hair just a little bit, and Adam’s eyes didn’t soften when he looked at him.

 “Oh, I don’t know,” Adam said, seeming to miss Jordan’s tone completely, “I don’t often get to work above a good pizza shop.”

“I wasn’t really there today,” Jordan said, “actually.” _I was still in my apartment with you_ , _somewhere in my head,_ only just didn’t slip off the end of his tongue, mostly because Adam finished his coffee and aimed it for a nearby bin. He missed, and Jordan’s laughter followed the red tips of his ears the whole way to retrieve it.

“Shut up,” he said, embarrassed, but clearly pleased Jordan was laughing. They walked a little closer together now.

“I was only there for a little bit of the day,” Jordan explained, “because I was in this part of town actually.”

“Exciting.”

“Yeah, we have two attorneys in with us at the minute. You have to clock up quite a few probono hours for the New York Bar,” he explained, “so Lo – Loris – and Virgil bring us along to help. They let me carry their boxes. Loris doesn’t say much, I think he’s tired explaining to people that you can’t just scare people off by quoting precedent, no matter what they say in _Suits._ ”

“I met Loris,” Adam said, too vaguely.

“Yes,” Jordan said, with a little alarm. Lo was taller, dreamier and blonder than Jordan would ever be. Just like when Trent and Andy had had Adam backed into a corner, he reached – Adam quite close – and rubbed his hand carefully in the space between Adam’s shoulders.

“It’s cool, hanging out with them,” he continued, when Adam didn’t seem to mind. 

“Hmmm?” Adam said, blinking. “My basketball skills need work,” he admitted, a little sourly.

Jordan laughed nervously. Adam hadn’t been thinking of Loris at all, and he felt a little stupid, and that he’d been a little mean about Adam’s career, because Adam was so close, and his eyelashes were so long, and really, then, he didn’t think much at all.

***

“Are you alright, Hendo?” Andy flipped to a free page in his notebook as Jordan pulled up a chair next to him. It was Wednesday, clinic day, and they were arranging chairs and tables in Mo’s restaurant downstairs. Too early for pizza, Mo was obliging with a giant boiler of coffee, cheese sandwiches and cookies on trays. While they were providing an essential community service, Jordan did wonder how many people only came for Mo’s cookies. If Andy did want to make any suggestions in his direction, a confectionery counter probably wouldn’t go astray anywhere in Mo’s business plan.

“I’m fine,” Jordan said. Lied.

In a manner which was pretty uncharacteristically calm for Andy, he put down his pen, turned in his chair, and very slowly narrowed his eyes.

“ _Fine_?” He echoed, in all of it’s enunciated, sing-song Scottish.

“Okay,” Jordan added hastily. “I need a favour. You,” he paused, “go to basketball games. Right?”

He’d hoped to skirt around the issue as much as possible. But Andy had already added two and two and come up with ten, and a delighted, beaming smile sprouting across his face, from ear to ear.

“You want to bring _Adam_ to a basketball game?” He paused, and the smile died a little. “Hendo, do you even know what a basketball _is_?”

“Yes,” Jordan insisted, indignant. He knew the ball went through the hoop, at least.

“What’s the NBA team here, so, genius?”

Jordan paused. He really should have Googled this.

“The…”

“Nuh… ick,” Andy rolled out the hint slowly. And finished with a sigh when Jordan looked floored. “The Knicks, mate. I can’t believe you’ve lived here like your whole life and don’t – you know. Never mind. Anything to get you laid.” He ignored Jordan’s grimace.  “When do you want the tickets for?”

“When’s the next game?”

“Friday. And it’s against the _Celtics_.”

“They’re your team.” Andy’s desktop background made a lot of sense now.

“They’re ‘my team’.” Andy often resorted to excessive, sarcastic quotation marks, but thankfully never in front of the public. “But I’ll get you the tickets,” he licked his lips, leaned forward and jabbed his index finger down onto the lino top of the table, “it’ll cost you.”

“I don’t need _your_ tickets,” Jordan explained, “I just need to know where to get some.”

Andy shook his head, tutting. “Tickets in the Garden get passed down in _wills_ , you aren’t just going to come across some floating on the internet.”

“Aren’t you?” Jordan was suspicious, that one of the top-rated tourist activities on TripAdvisor might have scarcely available tickets.

“No, no,” Andy was still tutting. “You’re my bud, I got this for you.”

“Right,” Jordan said, a little feebly, feeling a little like this was Andy’s way of getting Jordan to owe him a favour forever and he was going to spend at least the next year paying for it. “What’ll it cost me?”

“I guess,” Andy rolled his eyes, “the first thing we’ve gotta do is give you some basketball lessons. You know, so you two will actually have something to talk about.”

* * *

 

“The Knicks game,” Adam spat his toothpaste into the sink when he bent over, “ _tonight_?”

It was only the third morning they’d both woken up in Jordan’s apartment, yet the second toothbrush on his bathroom sink was immediately recent.

“Well, yeah.” Jordan was close enough to run his fingers gently up and over Adam’s inked side, from where it dipped under the towel around his waist. “You follow it. Don’t you?”

Adam’s reflection met his eyes. “I do,” he admitted. “Avidly. I guess, I mean, I just…” He straightened, and turned around, pushing up against the sink until his eyes were level with Jordan’s. Their richness, the feelings that echoed through Adam’s irises when they were this close – Jordan wasn’t quite used to it yet. His hair was still wet from his shower and stuck a little around his ears. Jordan willed his fingers to smooth some of it back, in this moment where Adam seemed to grapple with what to say.

“Don’t take this personally,” he started, eventually, and far too politely, “but do you even know what a basketball _is?”_

Jordan did take it personally. “What makes you say _that_?” What was making _everyone_ say that?

“I just noticed,” Adam chirped, too cheerfully, bumping a little off his shoulder. He opened his mouth to say something else, but didn’t, reaching now for Jordan’s mouthwash.

“That’s disgusting,” Jordan pointed out, as Adam took a mouthful. “That’s _mine_.” He poked Adam hard in the stomach – easy, because he’d been letting himself lean so close that he practically reached the whole way around him now as it was, drawn in by that incessant, electric pull Adam radiated like no one else ever had – and Adam yelped, or laughed, or coughed the mouthwash into the sink.

“ _Ugh_ ,” Adam jabbed him back, _hard_ , right in the rib. Jordan almost recoiled but reacted: wrapping the whole way around Adam when he took aim again and trapped his arms to his chest. Adam squirmed, but it was futile, really, because Jordan felt him grow hotter as he did, and knew that if he angled his mouth right now to this certain place right under Adam’s ear that the scrabbling would cease completely. Like clockwork, he kissed him and Adam went limp, the muscles of his back soft and stretching. Jordan couldn’t remember growing fond of a body like this, nor one that reacted like to him by mellowing so absolutely.  Only physically, though, because there was a bit of flame to Adam too.

“If you don’t let me go, I’m going to have to wipe my toothpaste off on your shoulder,” Adam said, never quite defeated, “and _that’s_ disgusting.”

* * *

 

Jordan had only been to Madison Square Garden once before, and it had been for a pretty ill-advised U2 concert. The atmosphere on game day was obviously wildly different, and when he met Adam at the entrance to the subway people were already heading into the venue decked from head to toe in blue and orange. Everyone _smelled_ excited.

“Alright?” Adam asked, beaming as he touched off his arm.

“I don’t know if orange is your colour,” Jordan said, about the enormous snapback on his head. He missed the soft hair it covered, more than anything. Adam’s smile grew wider as though it hadn’t already looked impossible.

“It’s so great,” he promised, “you’re going to want to come back _every_ game.”

Jordan thought about the price of the tickets and silently disagreed.

Adam was easily able to navigate the entrance, but once they got inside Jordan had to slow him down. “No,” he said, pointing to the section number on the ticket, and then the stairs _, I think we’re up here_. They started to climb, and Jordan started to panic a little as the court got smaller and smaller, and he was aware beside him Adam turned occasionally to mourn the distance. It hit Jordan as to why, and then he wondered why he hadn’t seen it earlier.

“We’re in here,” he said. It wasn’t _literally_ the back row, but Jordan did hope there weren’t many tall people in the section. The seats in the row seemed too small for the people that were in them, and he apologised profusely to every frowning spectator they forced to stand on the way past. They sat, _finally_ , right in the middle of the row and squished tight together like sardines.

“You already had seats,” Jordan murmured, right up close to him, “didn’t you.” When Adam looked very guilty, he added, “they’re right up at the front, aren’t they?”

Adam shrugged, and didn’t meet his eyes. “It’s fine,” he said, a little too lightly, “up here’s not _too_ bad.” He squinted at the only screen they could properly see. The guy in the seat next to him started searching for something in his pocket and jostled him a little when he did. Jordan tried not to laugh at the _fury_ that ran across Adam’s face before he quickly composed himself.

“It’s _fine_ ,” Adam said, a little less convincingly this time. “I, er. I bet the atmosphere is great up here. Like the phone signal.” Whether the last part was a joke was not entirely clear.

Jordan couldn’t help smarting over the fact that Andy had promised him _good_ seats. Not only that, but if he squinted, he could see that the front row on the other side of the court had seats with _cushions_ , and _cupholders_ , and, boy, did he really need a beer. Or binoculars.

Adam must have sensed it and nudged over closer, as though that were possible. “Hey,” he urged, not entirely convincingly, “it’s going to be great. These games are _great_. But I, um. I’ve gotta get something to drink. Want anything?”

Jordan was tempted to follow him the whole way out, but instead he blithely listed off a drink and waited for Adam to complete the obstacle course of people and seats back down the aisle before he shot Andy a text. He knew Andy, for once, would be buried down somewhere in the away fans, who were chanting a fight song of distinctly Celtic origin, not that Andy’s involvement in this kind of thing would be any surprise. They were also _much_ closer to the front. Jordan now understood his eagerness to fob his usual tickets off.

A roar erupted from the crowd, and the congregation rose to their feet. Jordan looked hopelessly around, panicking, because Adam wasn’t back yet, as the announcer boomed the imminent arrival of both teams onto the court. The chants rang out, Jordan couldn’t decipher _any_ of them, and this was _worse_ than the number two line at eight thirty on a Monday morning.

Craning his neck, he could just see the teams lining up on the court when he spotted Adam skipping back down the row, half-looking where he was going, half-looking down at the court, all-spilling beer from the large plastic cups he was carrying. How he’d totally avoided tripping was a small miracle, and Jordan knew he had to dramatically reign in how relieved he was that Adam was back squished in beside him.

“Cheers,” he said, taking the drink off him, but Adam was already giving the impending game his full attention.

“We need a win,” he said, hopping a little from foot to foot, Jordan imagined, because he didn’t usually stand at these games, “we _really_ need a win.”

The game began, and the crowd heaved, and Jordan came to understand why these were good tickets: the crowd swayed left and right, following the trajectory of the ball a little like a rollercoaster, and with one beer – quickly followed by a second – it was a lot more fun than Jordan had anticipated. Not only was the crowd energy infectious, Adam’s energy was too. Jordan had no idea how Adam had seats so regularly close to the court and didn’t run onto it at every opportunity. His colourful swearing and arm waving was almost as entertaining as the match itself. Incensed, Adam was as attractive as he’d ever been, if not more, and Jordan couldn’t stop looking at him. The venue was too loud, and brass, both in sound and colour. But Adam immediately next to him was _more._

Jordan found himself so swept up in the spectacle that he had a beer in one hand, the other on Adam’s opposite shoulder for balance as he chanted along with the crowd in a roar of “ _defence! Defence! Defence!_ ” as the final siren sounded and everyone erupted into cheers.

A much-needed win, Adam told him, his eyes shining like the only way they could after four beers on the trot. The shuffled out along the row, Jordan only realising that he had adrenalin pounding in his ears, Adam clearly not realising that a few hours of standing and squinting at the screen hadn’t done him any harm. “To be honest,” he admitted, as they began to descend the many steps “you can see the plays much better from up here,” and his hand wormed its way through Jordan’s unfastened coat to his back as they stood, sandwiched together on the same step and waiting for the crowd in front of them to clear, and rubbed, slowly, deliberately.

“I’d come back,” Jordan admitted. Adam beamed at him.

The heated atmosphere lifted only a little as they spilled out onto the street, people making bursts for the hot dog stands on their way past.

“No, no,” Jordan said, as Adam made a beeline for one, and then when he made for the sedan parked, as usual, right where it wasn’t meant to be parked, “we’re getting you some _real_ beer food.” And he pulled him towards the subway entrance.

Adam looked amused, but interested, and followed.

“We have to get you a ticket,” Jordan said. He’d only had four beers, but a lack of dinner meant they were hitting home a little. “Come on. Can you work the machine?”

“ _Can_ I?” Adam looked appalled, and shrugged Jordan’s arm off his shoulder where it happened to find itself. He moved over in front of the touchscreen and a little frown, a little V that only sat there when he was concentrating very hard – or so Jordan had come to learn – appeared between his brows. But his fingers danced across the touchscreen and anticipated the prompts before they appeared.

Jordan watched, fascinated.

“It’s almost like,” Adam said, very smugly, “I’ve taken the subway _lots_ before, isn’t it?” He hiccupped a little. It made his hair bounce.

Jordan’s arm found its way around him somehow on the other side of the turnstile and used it to guide him to the right platform.

They huddled together waiting for the train, which had less to do with the cold and the crowded platform, and more to do with how Jordan could feel his throat start to slick, desire trickling into his pulse. He could smell Adam from here, like he smelled in the morning: a linen-y, soapy scent.

Adam whipped his Knicks hat off his head and placed it down on Jordan’s with a bit of reach.

“You’re _wasted_ ,” Adam laughed, fixing it in place.

“ _You’re_ wasted,” Jordan replied.

Adam – in this beer haze, the fulcrum of his entire universe; moved closer. The view under his lashes was soft and enormous.

“Your eyes are pretty,” he murmured, running his finger back across Jordan’s cheek.

They nearly missed the train.

* * *

 

Maybe it was the cold as they climbed out of the subway station that caused him to sober up, but Adam seemed to tire considerably as they walked down the street, tugging on Jordan’s hand as they walked.

“It’s just up here,” Jordan urged, “ _promise_.”

The truck sat around the corner, lit up bright and its motor purring noisily into the night. There was a small crowd out the front, as there always was on a weekend.

Adam squinted at the sign propped up on top of the truck. “ _Bobby’s Speciality Food,”_ he read, cautiously.

Jordan’s stomach growled. “Ugh,” he said, “it smells _amazing_.”

“Ugh,” Adam said. “Smells like MSG.”

At the top of the line, Jordan left Adam to scrutinize the menu. Bobby was an odd character, with a neck tattoo and massive, lamp-like eyes that were eerily grey – but his combinations with French fries were second to none. He had taken to wearing a floppy Santa hat on Jordan’s most recent visit and didn’t disappoint. It was exacerbated by the fact that he generally did a lot of nodding, and he had a particularly gleaming grin with teeth that shone like the stainless-steel interior of his portable kitchen.

“Ah!” he said. He didn’t know Jordan’s name, although Jordan was sure he’d been wasted enough to tell him several times. “Nice hat,” he offered. Jordan was still wearing Adam’s ostentatious, blue and orange Knicks snapback.

“I could say the same to you,” Jordan pointed out.

Bobby tipped the Santa hat down in a salute. “What can I get you? And your,” Adam was frowning, “friend?”

“A number five,” Jordan said. He reached, a tugged at Adam’s coat to get his attention. “What do you want?”

Adam had paled a bit since he started to read.

“Curry fries?” He asked, with clear horror, “ _cheesy_ curry fries?” He squinted, reading down. “You… you put fries, rice and curry sauce into a box and call it a _meal_? This is speciality food from where, exactly?”

“Harlem,” Jordan and Bobby said, in unison.

Adam looked green now. “I’m not hungry.”

“We’ll take two fives,” Jordan said quickly. “They’re both for me.”

“What’s a five?”

Neither Bobby or Jordan answered, and they all watched Bobby liberally sprinkle cheese on top of the curry sauce in Jordan’s takeaway box, and Adam went a shade greener.

“Are you okay?” Jordan asked, exchanging a fistful of dollars for his plastic bag of beer food goodness. But when he parted the bag handles so he could lean in and take a whiff, Adam sniffed a little when the scent hit his nose and didn’t immediately recoil. In fact, a little colour returned to his cheeks.

“I’m not touching you if you eat that,” he warned as they walked away. But not very convincingly.

Jordan reached around the bottom of the plastic bag for the accompanying plastic cutlery and popped open the lid of one of the takeaway boxes.

“That’s gross,” Adam said, as Jordan twirled melted cheese and curry around the large potato wedge on the end on his fork.

“You don’t have to eat it,” Jordan replied, simply. “ _Fuck_ ,” he moaned, after the first mouthful. For some reason, alcohol only heightened his taste buds to the glories of deep fried potatoes, generic curry sauce and melted cheese: an absolutely perfect combination under the circumstances, that shouldn’t work, but did and _really well_.

Adam looked insulted and opened his mouth to say something as they traipsed back down the street to Jordan’s building, passing the subway entrance again. He looked like he thought better of it for a minute and closed his mouth again. But Adam was very bad a keeping his opinions to himself.

 “I know what you’re thinking,” Jordan murmured. His hands were so completely occupied with polishing off his takeaway that Adam had had to reach into his pocket for his keys. To do so he had to move very close and lean in. And there was enough alcohol in Jordan’s veins to make him feel a little brave.

“What?” Adam asked, surprised.

“You’re thinking,” Jordan said, as Adam guessed the correct key on the ring with his third attempt, pushing open the massive, hulking door, “why doesn’t Hendo make that noise when he comes down on me, huh?”

Adam’s scowl was immediate. “ _Ugh_ ,” he snapped, petulantly, as he began to stomp up the stairs ahead of Jordan. “That is,” he said, now raising his voice over Jordan’s howls of laughter, “just – so out of line from you, like, like you could even _compare_ – “

“I was right!” Jordan said, wiping real tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. “I can’t believe I was right!”

He still had not managed to calm himself down by the time they reached his apartment.

“It’s not _that_ funny,” Adam said shrilly, now fiddling with the various locks on Jordan’s apartment door, “and you’re dripping sauce _all down your front_.”

Inside, Jordan wiggled out of his coat one arm at a time while still clutching his takeaway to his chest and kicked off his shoes on his way to sit on the bed. He was still _starving_. He tipped his head back and titled the box to drain away the last of the sauce. His brain swam a bit, obviously all those carbs he was consuming hadn’t quite got to work yet. Time for round two.

Adam hung his coat off on the back of the door and gingerly came to sit down beside him on the bed. The foot of space he gave himself was a direct correlation to the look of supreme distaste he was giving Jordan’s food.

“You’re eating,” he said, “so I’m not going to tell you what that looks like.” He nodded at the contents of the box.

“Brown, runny and lumpy?” Jordan grinned. He wasn’t sure what had him so giddy: adrenalin from the sports match, Adam’s soft touching, beer not being something he drank all that much. Although he usually had a lot more of it before he resorted to Bobby’s truck. He proffered the box and his fork, but Adam shook his head.

“Alright,” Jordan said, “I need the bathroom.” He balanced his meal down on his duvet and headed to the curtain. When he returned, a large potato wedge was missing from the middle of the container – large enough that the entire contents level had dropped, so potentially more than one had been lifted – and Adam had the tiniest of brown smudges at the edge of his lip. No more was said. Jordan scoffed the rest of the box, and slowly they settled together.

Jordan’s head was still swimming a little when he found himself on his back, stretched out, Adam’s belly making for a very soft pillow. One of Adam’s hands lazily scratched behind his ear – Jordan’s skin sizzled under his touch. It always did.

They hadn’t been seeing each other for very long at all, but Jordan didn’t remember a time, really, where they’d taken time to be with each other like this. This position they’d just settled into. Slow, comfortable silence.

Adam’s eyes were closed, and there was a little frown on his face. He was clearly also trying to decide if he’d had too many or not enough drinks.

His fingers paused, as Jordan took a deep breath, and let out a massive burp.

“You’re an animal,” he said, his stomach lifting Jordan’s head when he laughed.

“You’re still here,” Jordan shot back. He moaned and stretched and moaned: his stomach was over-full.

Adam waited patiently for him to lift himself slowly, and turn, and rearrange himself alongside him.

Jordan moaned again when he settled. Lying on his side was easier on his stomach, it was easier to _breathe_. He reached across Adam’s body to take his hand, watched his face relax, his neck twist so when his eyes opened it was right into Jordan.

 _He is beautiful_ , Jordan thought, as he always did when Adam looked at him, beer-addled or no. As it was, Adam’s eyes glazed ever so slightly.

“You need bread,” Jordan told him sternly, “or you will _really_ have a bad hangover in the morning.”

He waited for the retort. It didn’t come. Adam’s hand lifted, and the edge of his knuckles brushed down Jordan’s cheek. They were close enough that he could twist a little, lean, press his forehead to Jordan’s hold it there. Jordan closed his eyes and the seconds drew out: his chest warmed, his heart hammered _Adam, Adam, Adam._

When the kiss came, it was so much softer than he had thought possible. Adam’s hand shifted in his, fit their fingers together. His lips stilled, his eyes opened, and they were so close.

“It’s nice,” Adam said, in a small voice, “being with you.”

It took a second to sink in, because Adam’s face in that moment was everything. But when it did, all of the air lifted completely from his lungs. He freed his hands and cupped them the whole way around Adam’s face and kissed him. Adam made a surprised noise against his lips, but then he turned, and moved right up so their bodies tangled, and his tongue curled into Jordan’s mouth and Jordan’s chest started to rise, and rise and –

A sharp pain knifed him right between his ribs, and he recoiled. And then it stabbed again, and he gritted his teeth, and again as he pressed his face into Adam’s neck.

“What?” Adam’s hands were all around him, he was panting. “Jord?” Panicked. “Are you alright? What’s wrong?”

Jordan felt his body groan, forced himself to breathe. The pain faded a little. “Heartburn,” he said, a half sob.

It took Adam about half a minute more of concern to realise that he had the last laugh. And when he did, he burst out laughing so spectacularly that everyone in the building must have heard him.

* * *

 

Sunlight, through the blind he had neglected to pull.

It was the first thing Jordan became aware of as he stirred. The second was Adam: sprawled with half of himself across Jordan in the bed. Jordan stared at him for a few long seconds, because the winter sunshine illuminated the hairs at Adam’s crown. They lifted to the slightest of Jordan’s breaths. Jordan was momentarily distracted by this, they were close enough to his nose that he could watch them despite his questionable vision.

There hadn’t been an instance, so far, where he’d woken up with Adam still in the bed with him – he had always been in the shower, getting dressed, grappling with Jordan’s phone charger… running out the door on his way to work.

And yet here he was, wonderfully peaceful, effortlessly soft, one heel hooked possessively around Jordan’s calf under the duvet. He didn’t remember falling asleep with Adam spread so liberally across him. It must have happened some time during the night.

Somewhere, in the back part of his brain that was still half asleep, a voice said: _Saturday._

Adam was still here, even though it was bright, because it was Saturday morning and he didn’t have to go to work. Jordan waited for his erection under the sheet to start to bother him, for his stomach to twist and turn as it always did when Adam touched him, for him to want to kiss Adam right now in a breathless thrill.

Instead, he thought: _this is really nice._

It was a little uncomfortable, sure: he felt a little itchy already where sweat stuck Adam to him, and he seemed to have lost all feeling in the arm that Adam lay on. Adam was definitely too heavy to be lying on him.

But he could really relish getting used to it.

His sigh when he rested his head back onto the pillow disturbed Adam a little. Jordan felt, vividly, all the parts of him that Adam moved against when he stirred. His hand that stretched across and rested on Jordan’s arm squeezed a little. He settled for a short second, then stirred again, whining when he lifted his head, bleary, his eyes set in a squint by the depths of his sleep.

They’d already closed again when leaned forward to push his forehead into Jordan’s. This time it was distinctly for balance.

“Hi,” Jordan managed. Anything past that felt like too much of a mouthful. He let his nose nuzzle gently in alongside Adam’s, urged him back to sleep. Adam’s limbs stretched – each way and long, like a cat’s – and when he settled again seemed to be more wrapped around Jordan than ever. He let his head slide away and fall next to him on the pillow. “Sleep,” Jordan urged.

Adam made a small, mewling noise of agreement. His body relaxed, became heavy, and his breathing evened.

When Jordan turned his head, he could see, in HD quality, every line on Adam’s face. He thought: _this is really nice_ , again, and closed his eyes.

* * *

 

“This is my _favorite_ place,” Adam said, dragging him along by the elbow, “especially at Christmas.”

Jordan was still annoyed that his rumbling stomach had brought an end to a particularly long, lovely but cold morning that they’d spent pressed together on a Central Park Bench. It had snowed again, and the lake was frozen over so there were no ducks to watch, and it really was _freezing_ , but Adam’s smile was warmer than any sun, so it hadn’t really mattered.

Adam was now forcefully leading him towards the boathouse by the lake. Jordan had only ever seen the inside of it in movies – although he generally avoided movies set in New York, because he found them really disorientating. When he pointed this out, Adam replied: “yes, it’s _really_ cheesy. That’s the best bit!”

Jordan didn’t have a good argument for that.

The wait for lunch was shorter than he thought it would be, and the waiter found them a small table facing out onto the lake through the closed window. Jordan was surprised to find that it was warm enough for him to take off his coat. Inside, the place was pretty stunning: all white and adorned in fairy lights, Christmas carols playing over the speakers. He looked around, and everyone was out for Saturday lunch in their finery.

“I don’t think I have either the wardrobe or the wallet for this place,” he said, to no one in particular.

“That’s why you’ve got _me_ ,” Adam chirped, touching Jordan’s hand softly on the way to the menu. “Interestingly, my parents don’t like coming here.”

“Why not?”

Adam’s tongue had curled around his lip as he squinted at his lunch options.

“Oh,” he said, as if just realising Jordan had asked a question, “well, I mean. It’s a bit,” he looked around, searching for the word, “ _public_ for them. A bit,” he paused, nodded deliberately at the clientele, and lowered his voice, “cheap.”

Jordan knew what he meant but still found it a little tone deaf. Like, the people chatting noisily at the tables around them were way classier than anyone Jordan hung out with. Also, the _cheapest_ thing already on the brunch menu was a glass of juice, and it was already going to set him back seven whole dollars.

Adam must have noted his change in expression, because he hastily added, “but it’s not what _I_ think. We’ll have,” he said, to the waiter, who appeared at his shoulder, “a latte, a coffee and – “, and he went on to order for about five people from the menu. “We have to try a bit of everything,” he explained. He looked very excited, so Jordan let it go.

“There’s something I’ve been wondering,” he started when they were alone again, then paused, and waited for Adam to look at him. “The first time we – you know, when we went to Mo’s for pizza. You had to leave because of the press. And there were,” he admitted, “people with very large flashbulbs sitting patiently outside when I did leave. What was that about?”

Adam shrugged, but tellingly looked away. “Ah,” he said, nonchalantly, “just a story. It only got a bit of traction because they’d nothing else to write about. It’s,” he paused, “complicated. And nothing.”

“Right.”

“You haven’t looked me up yet, have you?” Adam asked, wryly. “Online.”

“I didn’t think it mattered,” Jordan said.

“It doesn’t,” Adam said, nodding, “but you might understand why there’s no longer a story.”

Jordan paused, and then shuffled through his coat pocket for his phone. He gave Adam a careful look, for permission, before he started to type.

Adam’s family had a Wikipedia page adorning the top row of the Google search. Second, was the “latest news” band. And he stopped again, before pressing into the first article. It was dated the day of their first date.

“Adam Lallana,” he read the sub-headline out loud, “son of Lallana heiress Sharon, seen leaving the restaurant of old flame, celebrity restauranteur,” he swallowed, “ _Dejan Lovren_.” He could even see himself in the picture, following Adam out of the building. He blinked, and blinked again to digest it, but no matter how much he did the whole image looked _surreal_.

Adam reached and took his hand, with the haste of someone who anticipated it might be pulled away, although Jordan felt too numb to move.

“My family has a press officer,” Adam explained, too calmly. “Several, actually. Dejan and I went to school together – “

“ – you said – “

“ – yeah, well. We were also fucking for a bit,” Adam admitted. The last time he’d said _fucking_ about sex, Jordan had been holding him in his bed, and it now made something in him contort painfully. “Look, believe me when I say it wasn’t anything. It wasn’t. I didn’t… “, Adam struggled with the word, and decided to say something else. “Anyway, it ended pretty quickly when he started calling the photographers whenever I’d go to his restaurant, especially when he talked to them about, well, whatever it was we were doing.”

“It says here,” Jordan said, still numb, “that you were _engaged_.”

“Oh Christ,” Adam muttered. “Well, we most certainly _weren’t_.”

Jordan remembered Dejan, shaking his hand, looking him up and down. Jordan thought, _I don’t own a fancy restaurant_ or _have classical facial features_ , and suddenly felt very small.

Adam squeezed his hand to get his attention, before continuing: “I thought my parents would kill him when they got wind of it, it’s not really the image they spend all of their time trying to get across. They loved it though,” he said, his voice now a little caustic, “they thought it was _modern_ of me to get into bed with a lowly chef, a self-made man; as though Dejan’s family aren’t on the exact same social… _stratosphere_ as mine and fund him. It ended,” he squeezed Jordan’s had really very tight, “ _months_ ago.”

Jordan wanted to answer, but his head was racing. It filled, suddenly, with a crude image of Adam and Dejan – possibly taller and more handsome than Jordan’s memory truly remembered – in a shiny service kitchen somewhere, Adam undoing his belt, turning around…

Their food arrived, but Jordan felt far too ill to look at it.

Adam, turning around for Dejan. Adam, turning around like that, like it was what he was used to, the first time he’d been under Jordan. _Fucking_. Thoughts pounded in his head and smashed together, mixed in with panic – because he shouldn’t feel like this. Not when he’d only been seeing Adam a week.

“Why did your mom,” he croaked, eventually, “send us to _his_ restaurant.” Adam hadn’t touched the food either, and still held his hand, despite Jordan’s now soaking palm. “Why did we even _go_.”

“I didn’t tell her it was a date,” Adam said, plainly, “I said I was meeting up with a friend from my college soccer team. If you _really_ have to know. Also,” he added, an afterthought, “in case you didn’t notice: Dejan’s fucking the busboy.”

Jordan started. Joe, the waiter, meeting them at the lift with his apron half on and sweating. Jordan just assumed he’d been _running_ , and because that it could have been something else never even crossed his mind, he felt his face burst into flames.

Adam grinned for the first time since they’d started on this subject, as if to say: _see_?

“Oh,” Jordan said.

“Believe me,” Adam added, still smug, “when I say it was casual. And over.”

Jordan stared at Adam’s hand in his, still feeling a bit hollow. Was that why Adam, that first time, had tried to coldly let Jordan know that his tattoo was something that was admired often? But he hadn’t even nearly tried to be like that since.

“We,” he croaked, “ _fuck_.”

Adam went quiet. He turned in his seat and slid his other hand around Jordan’s to cup it completely. Warm it. Hold it.

“Well, no,” he said, quietly. He looked up and met Jordan’s eyes. “We don’t, do we? It’s more than that, when it’s with you.” He looked embarrassed, like of all the things they’d just discussed, this was somehow the most sensitive.

Jordan thought about how he’d been with Adam that morning – once he’d woken a little, roused a little, how it had been languid and careful. Tangled up in him like it was the only place he belonged. Everything about him this morning had been exquisite, perfect, because Adam was all of these things when he was wound up to breaking point from Jordan’s careful touch. It very much clashed in his head with the caricature of Adam bent over in an industrial kitchen. He hated himself for thinking of it, when Adam in bed at the minute stole his breath, was something he didn’t feel he could ever get enough of.

Jordan wasn’t naïve enough to look past what he felt about Adam as anything that wasn’t just peppered with desire, that so much of it was physical and there was clearly so much about Adam that he didn’t know yet: it was too early, this was _too new_ , for Jordan to be falling for him.

Adam looked a little nervous and he waited for Jordan’s reply. But he didn’t look like he was going to take it back. Instead, when Jordan didn’t speak, he said: “look, there’s a reason I didn’t bring this up.”

“Is there?” Jordan managed.

“Yes.” Adam paused. “I, uh. There was a box of condoms on your bathroom floor, that time.”

“Yes?”

“It was nearly empty.”

“ _So_?”

“So, I’d only stayed one night. At that point. And you. You’ve bought a new box since, that actually fit you. Because the first ones weren’t,” his voice wavered, “ _for you_.”

There was a heavy silence. Adam looked away, at the food. He let go of Jordan’s hand, bright red.

“We’d better eat,” he said, sheepishly.

* * *

 

Jordan hadn’t spoken to Adam since they’d awkwardly said goodbye outside the boathouse on Saturday. At first, he thought he’d just needed a bit of space to digest what had been _far_ too much information, and food, but now it was stretching on and he wasn’t entirely sure how to get over it.

But now it was Wednesday, and the longer the silence went on, the more it felt dumb, and like what everything Adam said actually didn’t matter, because Jordan missed him enough that it hurt.

He’d given up that morning and taken out his phone. Not for the first time that week, he wondered what on earth he could say without dredging up a million shades of _awkward_. _Do you want to come over tonight?_ And _Are you free tonight_? Were the two drafts he’d toyed with for over an hour, until he eventually settled on _Tonight?_ And sent it before he could talk himself out of it.

Several seconds later, the panic struck. That message was, obviously, far too cryptic. Or worse: it would be interpreted as a booty call. Sweating now, he reached back into his pocket for his phone, typed _I really missed you yesterday_ , and again sent it before he could think too much about it and immediately regretted it.

Before he could fling his phone out of the window to save himself, he found Chambo towering over him, casting a long shadow over his desk, buried under all the work he hadn’t been doing when he’d been hanging out with Adam.

“There are no more biscuits,” Chambo announced. Something about it told Jordan that this wasn’t actually what merited Chambo’s presence. Not that he was in any mood to decipher the real reason.

He blinked. “I didn’t eat them,” he retorted, “if that’s what you’re asking.”

Chambo cocked his head. “Ohhh, _titchy_. Well, it wasn’t what I was asking. Come with me to the shop to get some.”

Jordan gestured at his laptop. A little feebly. _I have to work._ But Chambo already knew he’d won, and Jordan followed him out of the office and down the stairs, already feeling far too sorry for himself.

Chambo waited until they were in the biscuit aisle of the nearby supermarket before he spoke.

“Nice weekend?” He asked, casually.

Jordan shrugged. “Sure.”

“Andy told me you went to the game.” Chambo raised an eyebrow. “Did Adam have a good time?”

“Sure,” Jordan said again, remembering the heartburn incident, and how Adam had laughed and laughed and _laughed._

“You’ve missed two Fridays at Mo’s,” Chambo noted.

Jordan found himself saying, a little miserably: “I really like him. Adam.”

Chambo paused, the packet of snickerdoodles half lifted from the shelf. “This is bad?”

“I don’t know,” Jordan said. Because he’d started, why shut up? “I think I like him a little too much.”

There was a very long silence where Chambo didn’t move a muscle, one biscuit packet still half-dangling from his hand.

“Let me get this straight,” he said, “your biggest issue with this guy is that you _like him too much_ and not, say, that his family disapproves of you, or, like – he spends more on shoes than you earn in a month.”

“Well,” Jordan thought about it for a long second, “I don’t know about those other things. We haven’t really been… seeing each other, you know, that long.” The words were so stiff they felt like chewing gum he was pulling from his clenched teeth. He dropped his eyes and fiddled with the edge of a nearby packet of peanut butter cups on an eye-level shelf. He didn’t say what he’d just realised he should have been thinking about, it should have been: _what if I really like him and the fact he inhabits a completely different world to me gets in the way?_ And not: _what if it’s too soon to really like him?_

The whole Dejan thing wasn’t weird because Adam hadn’t told him about it – as Adam had so succinctly pointed out: he didn’t expect Jordan to divulge _his_ previous boyfriends, not that he _ever_ intended to anyway, because being with Adam was different. It was weird because it had unfurled, with force, a wealth of clashing emotions that he harboured around Adam. It wasn’t that he couldn’t identify them. It was what it meant. And he had never felt like this about anyone before.

“Ah,” Chambo said, through dawning comprehension. “ _That’s_ your problem? That’s why you’ve been moping, all week? Because of the _timeframe_?”

Jordan could not believe he was going to have this conversation. Chambo was one of his best friends but they’d never discussed anything deeper than a _Good Wife_ finale.

“It’s scary,” he admitted, finally, “ _feeling_.” Adam’s carefully crafted admission that them being together made him feel _a lot_ made him pause before he could elaborate properly, and too late, Chambo’s eyes had already filled to the brim with glee about how it sounded.

 “I can’t believe you,” he said, shaking his head to quell his laughter. “You realise I have _seen_ him look at you?”

Jordan hadn’t quite figured out how to reply, but he had gone very red, when, in his pocket, his phone started to ring.

It was Adam, and Jordan answered with barely concealed relief, ducking around the corner into the next aisle.

“Adam?”

“Hey.” Adam’s voice filled his ear, low and soft, like he was standing right next to him beside the neatly stacked fridge full of sodas.

“Hey,” Jordan replied, suddenly feeling weak at the knees. When Chambo told him to embrace it, he could not know the extent.

“I’m sorry,” Adam was saying, still in an uncharacteristically low voice, “I haven’t – I’m meant to be working on… a really big thing. For work. It’s… so I’ve been at work since I saw you last, I think.”

The low voice and the slightly warbly echo suddenly made sense.

“Are you,” Jordan marvelled, “in the _bathroom_?”

“It’s the only place I could fit you in,” Adam said, and his laugh was a little muffled. Then, clearing his throat he said, “we’re so busy.”

“You’re the _boss_.” Jordan had the distinct impression Chambo was lurking just out of sight.

“Ha, ha,” Adam said, tired. “I wish. Listen, I saw your message and I… I’d really like to come over. Tonight. It’ll just be late.”

“Sounds like you need a break.”

“Well no,” Adam’s voice lowered to a breath, “I think I just need you, really.” Silence, and in Jordan’s mind’s eye, Adam blushed furiously. “I’ve,” he paused, “really missed you, too.”

“Oh yeah?” Jordan asked, warming.

“Yeah,” Adam promised.

Somewhere on Adam’s end of the phone, a toilet flushed.

“This is ridiculous,” Jordan heard him mutter. “I have to go.”

“See you tonight,” he said, and Adam hung up.

* * *

 

Adam showed up at ten. Jordan’s first thought was: _he really_ is _wearing the same clothes I last saw him in_. His second thought was really more like the static buzzing of a disconnected TV set, as Adam didn’t even bother to greet him but instead took a few short steps and sort of pitched forward, face-first, into Jordan’s shoulder.

“ _Nugh_ ,” he said, muffled. The sound was distressed, and alarmed, Jordan quickly folded his arms around Adam’s back to hold him to his chest carefully. Adam didn’t immediately offer any more clues to his state, but he made a weird noise that Jordan could only describe as a purr and stretched up, butting his head off Jordan’s jaw and moving into his neck.

Jordan had no idea what to do, so he just sort of held Adam to him – rather a lot of him and rather lumpy, given the thickness of his winter coat. Adam smelled a little stale but, as he had come to know, very much like Adam. He’d missed it, he realised. His gut churned. _I missed him_.

“I just,” he began, after several more long seconds. He was aware that all the warm air he had been carefully building up in his apartment was getting sucked into the absolutely Baltic corridor outside it. “I have to – “ he pressed Adam back a little to reach the edge of the open door to push it closed and Adam’s hands clawed into his ribs. A long second passed after the locks clicked, in which Adam’s nose nuzzled up his neck, and Jordan’s heart _surged_ , and he hoisted Adam up against the door when he took another step.

Adam let out a mock-scandalised gasp, but couldn’t keep it up, and started to laugh. His eyes shone with mirth even in shadow, heavy like feather dusters. And they kissed, and kissed again; taking generous pauses and then indulgent ones between each so Jordan could drink him in.

 _I missed him_.

 _He missed_ me.

Adam had loosened considerably by the time Jordan let him down. For the first time he saw the shopping bag, it’s handles twisted around Adam’s glove.

“A present?” he asked, touching Adam’s elbow gently, now that it was freed from his coat. “For _me_?” Adam, now a habit, hung his coat up on Jordan’s back door and handed him the bag.

“No,” Adam scoffed. “I just…” he trailed off, waiting for Jordan’s reaction as he frowned into the bag. “It’s for making muffins,” he explained, when Jordan offered no comment.

Jordan blinked at him. “ _Why_?”

“Well,” Adam said. He rolled up his shirt sleeves and snatched the bag back, “I wanted to see you, but I also wanted muffins, so… I combined them.” He flashed him a massive grin, and Jordan was _almost_ sold.

“You _bake_?” he asked, sceptically. Adam was already fiddling with the knobs on Jordan’s much maligned oven. He placed the bag on Jordan’s tiny counter space and began to unpack – he’d really thought of everything, right down to the cupcake wrappers and the muffin tin, all brand new and Whole Foods branded. He had no idea how Adam knew he didn’t have these things. “What are we making?”

“Double chocolate chip,” Adam said. Jordan moved up beside him, pressed his hand into the small of his back and he smiled up at him like these combined facts couldn’t have made him happier. He stretched, and pressed a kiss in Jordan’s cheek, taking him completely by surprise.

“Does it have to be _double_?” Jordan’s reached for the packet of chocolate chips, something to distract how overwhelmed he felt, only to find Adam’s hand had slammed down on it to stop it in his tracks.

“Yes,” he insisted. He twisted his neck to scowl, and it didn’t help Jordan’s ever-strengthening pulse.

Jordan grinned, and lowered his head onto Adam’s shoulder, into his neck. His glasses didn’t quite fit into the angle, bumping back uncomfortably up his nose.

“Do you _want_ to help me?” Adam whined.

“It’s not _my_ fault that you don’t seem to have a home to go to.” Jordan let him go, watched him fondly line up the ingredients and measuring spoons out on the counter.

“I’m not _let_ do this at home.”

“Why?” Jordan asked, surprised. Then: “should I be worried about fires? Or food poisoning.”

“Oh, no,” Adam said, rolling his eyes, “we don’t _cook_ in our kitchen. But also,” he caught Jordan off guard, kissing him, “I like your home,” he finished happily.

“What are kitchens for,” Jordan asked, puzzled, but warm from Adam’s second admission, “if not for _cooking_?”

“Entertaining,” Adam said, like _duh_.

Jordan paused. “Do you live with your parents?” It might explain why Adam had never brought him back there.

Adam shrugged. “I go between a few places,” he grinned, to mask his deliberately vague answer, “like here.” He stopped, pouring his carefully measured flour through his sieve before adding: “in case you’re worrying, here’s the only place I get some.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Jordan said. And he wasn’t, Adam’s kissing had been very convincing. “Do you need help?” He nodded at the collection of ingredients.

Adam tapped the butter with the edge of his spoon. “I could use three ounces of melted _that_ ,” he said.

They got to work, arms weaving in and out between each other as they assembled the batter on the tiny counter that Jordan managed to usually just about make a sandwich on. They spooned the sticky batter into bun cases – it truly did not look edible, but he was fixed instead on the path of Adam’s tongue as it travelled over the mixing spoon for the last of the batter.

Adam caught his eye, and he snorted. “Are you…?” he asked. “By the _spoon_? Seriously?” Deliberately, and slowly, he slid the spoon in and out of his mouth, and Jordan could only in that instance think of where that mouth had been on him and, already pressed up to him as they’d angled to fill the bun cases, he slid his hand around the inside of Adam’s thigh and slowly started to move it up.

“You’re going to have to try a bit harder,” Adam said. For all of his bravado, was suddenly a little breathless.

Jordan moved right up to him, pressed him back against the counter. His heart was slamming, there was still cupcake batter on the edge of Adam’s lip.

When he touched Adam through his trousers, Adam jerked into him with a desperate noise and the spoon clattered down when he pushed himself off the countertop.

“Wait,” he said, all patchy blush, “ _wait_.” This close, Jordan saw his lips tremble. “The muffins,” he pleaded, “let me put the muffins in… yeah, okay.” Jordan moved to one side to let Adam turn and scoop up the muffin tray.

“How long?” he said, when Adam had closed the oven door.

“We have twenty-five minutes,” Adam said, and reached for the hem of Jordan’s t-shirt.

* * *

 

“I missed you,” Jordan mumbled.

He could admit it now. Adam like this, all clammy and curled up against him, as they both descended slowly back to earth was enough to peel back all those layers of self-preservation that had stopped him admitting it out loud sooner.

Adam gave him a grin worthy of considerably wattage. He stretched his neck and planted a kiss between Jordan’s brows – his lips warm and lingering.

“Aren’t you sick of me yet?”

Jordan had already pushed his face into the damp hinge at the base of his neck, but he could hear Adam’s words forming through his smile.

“Silly question,” he retorted, pulling at Adam so he could shift closer. He loved feeling Adam’s chest heave against him, the leftover throes of exertion. _I did that_.

Adam had started to laugh, disturbing him. On the bedside table – Adam’s phone sounded. The muffins were finished.

“Let _go._ ”

Adam had attempted to clamber across him to silence the alarm, but Jordan had wrapped his arm around his waist to pull him back.

“Stay with me,” he whined. They rolled, and Adam reached again, and a collection of items including the phone clattered to the floor.

“Was that? My _glasses_ – “

“Your own, dumb, fault – “

Jordan let go in a panic and patted around the table for the familiar shape of his glasses and, relieved, found them still sitting on it. He jammed them down onto his nose – his world falling into a more certain focus – and sat up to scoop Adam’s phone off the ground.

Adam had already clambered off the bed and had managed to retrieve his shorts from the floor on the way to the oven. Jordan could admire the long ribbons of muscle up his back as he bent over to retrieve his muffins. An overwhelming, chocolately scent filled the room.

“ _Shit_ ,” Jordan heard himself say, actually laughing. “That smells _amazing_.”

Adam looked over at him, suddenly a little shy, and shrugged his shoulders.

“They’ll need a few minutes to cool,” he said, too casually.

Baking was not something Jordan had been expecting Adam to be self-conscious about. So far, it might have been the _only_ thing Jordan had ever known him to be self-conscious about.

So, already on his way to the bathroom, he scooped Adam up close – “do you _want_ me to drop them?” – and gave him a squeeze, and Adam squealed as indignantly as Jordan had hoped he would.

“Really, _very_ good,” he teased, and Adam attempted to wriggle free, embarrassed, so he let him go.

Back from the bathroom, Adam had already returned to Jordan’s bed with several of his muffins balanced on a plate. But he sat, cross-legged, with his phone propped up at the duvet in front of him and a forgotten muffin in one hand, scrolling.

His little frown broke when Jordan tilted the bed as he sat back on it.

“Sorry,” he said, hastily chucking his phone to the end of the bed. He moved, so Jordan could slide up right next to him, turned his head to receive the kiss.

The chocolate was still warm and gooey in Adam’s muffins. Jordan had already taken a second bite before he could stop himself.

“Adam,” he said, seriously, and through the crumbs, “you _made these_?”

“ _We_ made them,” Adam corrected. “Although they’re,” he squinted at the muffin in his hand, “a little dry – “

“ _Dry_?”

“Yeah, probably too much baking powder.”

Jordan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He hadn’t thought Adam had a shameful bone in his body and here he was curling a little into himself with embarrassment. What was it? Was it because it was something he made?

Jordan rubbed his hand off Adam’s bent knee, and waited until he looked so he could hold his gaze.

“You,” he said, sincerely, “could give Clyney a run for his money.”

Adam flushed magenta. “Shut up,” he said, looking away again.

They finished their muffins in silence. Nothing about their taste or texture made Jordan feel like withdrawing his statement.

“Don’t worry,” he said, as they started peeling back the wrappers of their second helping, “about work. I mean, even if it’s late you can come by here,” what he was saying was awkward and loaded and he hastily added, “only if you want. I get it,” he added, through that first glorious mouthful – into the crisp, sugary crust, “sometimes we end up representing people in court and we spend months under the paperwork. The last thing I want to do is come back and sit here by myself, and feel like I need to do more of it.”

Adam looked at him carefully.

“Do you still want to be an attorney?” he asked. Like he already knew the question was delicate.

Jordan had had this conversation with his parents many times. The clinic was doing well at the minute, Virgil and Lo had been pretty ferocious additions when it came to getting something, anything out of disputes for the little guy in the argument. With the way the city was increasingly going, there were going to be a lot more little guys losing out, and where would they be without people like him?

“I would,” he said, “but I really love what I do now, so. I still can’t afford it, so I’m not even thinking about it.” His parents had offered, and he’d hated them for it. But what did they expect Jordan to do, exactly? Go headlong into that incessant, Midtown hamster wheel?

He stopped, wished to change the subject and rubbed that particularly soft patch on Adam’s knee some more. “What are you working on?”

Adam chewed his lip. “Well, maybe you’ll be interested in it,” he seemed to decide. “Every year the foundation hosts a charity fundraiser just before Christmas for inner city causes. It’s,” he paused, looked up - his eyes shone, “my favourite event of the season. And our planner quit Saturday. So, I’ve spent the last two days,” he sighed, “going around, shaking hands, schmoozing. I’m trying to convince caterers and decorators to take us on for their busiest week on the year – four days before fucking Christmas -  _and_ I’m meeting the _right_ people, because it takes a personal touch; convincing them to come to a sixteen-hundred-dollar-a-plate dinner in the Met,” he said, to Jordan’s reaction: “what?”

“I can only imagine that’s small change to some people,” Jordan said. He couldn’t help but make it sound a little acidic. He thought about how his legal clinic – not _run_ by him, sure, but as much a part of him as anything was – scraped by every month.

Adam jutted out his chin defiantly.

“What?” Jordan replied to the movement, “why not just _give_ some of these people you’re raising the money for sixteen-hundred dollars? Why rent out the Met and throw a party at all?”

Adam swallowed, and lifted himself away from where he’d been fitted snugly into Jordan’s shoulder. His eyes met Jordan’s, unyielding and all pupil, and didn’t leave.

“I know what you think of me,” he said, with a voice like cut steel, warning him to not even go there. “I already _know_.” The muscles across his shoulders bunched, coiled.

“What do I think?” Jordan asked, softly. Something in him yearned to kiss those knots loose like nothing else in the world mattered.

“You think that I live in some sort of rich, gilded bubble,” Adam spoke like the words were acid, “and I don’t know how money works, or what it does, or that people need it – because I’ve always had it. I was like that, alright?” his voice dropped. “Is that what you want to hear? I spent half my time throwing parties on boats in Newport, half of it getting blind drunk at exclusive parties in a fifth avenue penthouse and _all_ of it oblivious to the world around me. Is that,” he said again, “what you want to hear?”

Jordan didn’t answer. He could see the path of the heat, barely contained, travelling across Adam’s chest, up his neck. Fury.

He knew they would have to have this conversation, yet he hadn’t been entirely sure it would ever come. Things had been so wonderful, so comfortable. He tried to study what he felt about Adam’s words, but all he felt was rage that he’d even brought it up when everything had been fine without the anvil of Adam’s life smashing it.

“I was twenty-five,” Adam said, “when I realised. It wasn’t,” his lips twisted as he searched for the words, “nothing _happened_ exactly. I just knew. The bubble? It’s a cage. This is the best way for me to use what I’m good at to make a change. Do you understand?”

Recognising this was tacit confirmation that Adam was not going to bite him, Jordan reached across his body to rub the flat of his palm into the tension in Adam’s nearest arm. He wasn’t convinced by Adam’s words, but Adam was already continuing.

“I hate it, but I will never be able to leave it. I’ve got to work within it, but nobody,” he paused, “ _works_. I annoyed my family for months until they let me have this job, and now that I have it, I want to give it my everything. Normally I just speech at these functions but now I’ve _made it happen_ , put it together in the most _Lallana_ way possible – with names, and contacts,” he shook his head, “my parents are going to be so proud.”  But this didn’t sound like it was a good thing.

“It’s going to be big, huh?” Jordan offered softly. Then, “if you’re worried about it, your inheritance isn’t important to me.”

“Only because you haven’t seen what _it_ is. I’ve been doing that on purpose.”

Jordan thought, he was doing a poor enough job.

“If it doesn’t change _you_ , then it doesn’t matter,” he promised. He wanted to believe it. Flames licked his insides for the exact being that sat in front of him, just and exactly the way he already was.

Adam looked a little introspective for a few seconds, before he shook his head, dismissive this time.

“I’ve never told anyone this before,” he said quietly. “Well, I don’t know. I think Milly has an inkling that I was having an existential crisis, but he never said anything.” He laughed a little nervously and turned his head away. The flare had died. _He’s too tired,_ Jordan thought, and then with a pang, _he said he wanted to come here because he needed me. Needed a break._

Jordan tilted Adam’s chin to him with his knuckle. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised. He surprised himself to find that it was an easy promise to make.

Adam took an enormous breath, and leaned in. “This fundraiser is really important to me,” he whispered, “will you come?”

Jordan didn’t understand. Not for a whole minute. He nodded around his apartment. “I don’t have a spare sixteen hundred dollars.”

“Yeah, well,” Adam said, _duh_ , “I do.” He laid his hand down over Jordan’s on his shoulder, stilled it. “Please come.”

Jordan hesitated. “I don’t know how qualified I am to mix in East Coast society,” he admitted. “I’m not even a real lawyer.”

Adam smiled thinly. “You don’t have to mix,” he said, “although I’m sure I could find _someone_ for you to talk to. No, I just,” he shuffled, a little uncomfortably, but closer none the less. He lifted the plate of muffins and put it down on the bedside table. “I guess it would be nice if you were there.”

Jordan took a long moment to consider it and decided that he was out of excuses. In the grand scheme of things Adam wasn’t asking for all that much. If anything, Adam just seemed to be asking for the support of a friend.

He reached, pressed his hand to Adam’s arm, rubbed gently.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll go. Because you asked so nicely. Mostly because you’re paying,” he tried to joke.

Adam looked a little stunned for a second, possibly something to do with all the touching, but composed himself.

“We’ll have to get you a suit, of course,” he said, deliberately putting on a self-satisfactory purr. It was as if he was a little annoyed with himself that he’d been caught talking so honestly. In truth, Adam admitting that he’d needed Jordan had never made Jordan want him more.

“I have a suit,” Jordan pointed out. Adam was so close now Jordan could feel his breath on his lips.

“That grey, used-car salesman thing you have in there?” Adam turned and nodded at Jordan’s wardrobe. In the light, shadows enunciated the hollows of his cheeks and he looked _devastating._ “Nah. I’ll get you a real suit.”

“You don’t have to get me anything,” Jordan said, hurriedly. He wasn’t quite sure at what point this might spiral into a habit.

Adam looked at him for a long second. Then he rocked, pushed Jordan back into the bed. It was a little awkward, Jordan’s glasses fell a little skew on his nose and Adam burst out laughing as he plucked them off and folded them away.

“Think of it as a business transaction,” he murmured, his grin halving his face, stretching along Jordan’s torso, curling their hips together. Jordan closed his eyes at the sensation, became extra aware of every inch of him that Adam’s skin pulled against. He felt Adam’s forehead come to rest against his and he let out a low hiss, curled his hands into his hair, opened his eyes to meet Adam’s and they were endless, _astonishing._

“Business transaction,” he echoed on a murmur, not quite a question, because he wasn’t sure he could articulate one under the circumstances. He was about to have Adam, long and drawn out and slow, and so much of his body was already preoccupied with the task.

“Well, yes,” Adam said, amused, right in his ear. “I mean, I’m going to have to sell you to my parents when you meet them there.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and concrit appreciated! What do you think?? What would you like to see?? I want to know! I seem to be sticking to a pretty consistent posting schedule for the first time ever, but comments are my lifeblood and let me know that you're still reading. This fic is getting very self indulgent, and you guys are the only people who can keep me on the right track.
> 
> I'm only starting chapter five, but I'll hopefully have it soon! You can check it's progress on my [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/lesbleusthroughandthrough).


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